THE WITNESS PAPERS. 



THE 



HEADSHIP OF CHRIST, 

AND THE 

RIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE, 

A COLLECTION OP 

ESSAYS, HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE SKETCHES, AND 
PERSONAL PORTRAITURES. 

WITH THE AUTHOR'S 

Celebrated letter ia Itortr §r0ugfjam. 

BY 

HUGH MILLER, 

AUTHOR OF "FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR," "TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS, 
"OLD RED SANDSTONE," " POPULAR GEOLOGY," ETC. 

BY PETER BAYNE, A.M. 



BOSTON: 

QOULD AND LINCOLN, 

59 WASHINGTON STREET. 

NSW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. 

1 8 7 2. 



. pi* 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 
GOULD AND LINCOLN, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 




ADVERTISEMENT 



TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



This volume, like the previous works of Hugh Miller, is issued 
by special arrangement with the author's family ; while Mr. Bayne, 
the editor, in a note to his Preface to the English edition, presents 
in brief the historic facts that caused the division of the Scottish 
Church, and has thus rendered the entire discussion more intel- 
ligible to American readers, and at the same time developed the 
great importance of the principles involved. 

Hitherto the author has been chiefly known for his writings on 
Geology, and in some other departments of secular literature, 
where he has won a distinguished name and achieved a prominent 
place among the lights of his age; in this work he is presented 
in a new character, as the champion of the Church in the exciting 
period of her history to which these articles refer. In this field of 
effort, no less than in those more quiet walks in which he delighted 
to range, he exhibits a fresh, vivid, and natural style, and that won- 
derful skill in description which Dr. Buckland said he would give 
his left hand to possess. 

The celebrated letter to Lord Brougham, which first directed 
public attention to Mr. Miller as a powerful writer, and as the man 



IV 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



best fitted to espouse and maintain the cause of the Church, will 
be found at the opening of the volume ; and the papers, generally, 
prepared by Mr. Miller in this cause, which enlisted his warmest in- 
terest and engaged his best powers, are characterized by Mr. Bayne, 
in his Preface, as " noble in eloquence, keen in satire, powerful in 
invective, and masterly in argument." 

Though written with primary reference to the Church of Scot- 
land and the spiritual welfare of the Scottish people, the great 
principles advocated in the work lie at the foundation of all reli- 
gious prosperity, while those against which it contends are insepara- 
bly associated with spiritual torpor and death ; and the discussion is 
thus appropriate to all times and places. 

The English edition of this work contains an Appendix on " the 
Cardross Case," embracing the address of Dr. Candlish before the 
Commission of the General Assembly in relation thereto. As the ad- 
dress is of considerable length, and its details of no special interest 
to American readers, instead of this Appendix will be found a brief 
outline of the more recent history of the controversy, including a 
statement of the Cardross case, and of the present aspect of the 
whole question. 

The work will secure many readers on this side of the Atlantic, 
and add to the author's great popularity. 

American Publishers. 



Boston, October 1, 1863. 



PEE FACE. 



To enter into the spirit of this book we must distinctly 
apprehend the conception formed by its author of the Pres- 
byterian Church of Scotland. 

Throughout her entire history the Scottish Church has 
been distinguished by two leading characteristics, seldom found 
in combination. 

First : She has assumed a high and commanding ecclesias- 
tical position, claiming a jurisdiction in spiritual concerns inde- 
pendent of and coordinate with the jurisdiction of the civil 
magistrate. She has declared Christ the Head of the Church, 
not in any abstract and inconsequential sense, but to the 
clear practical effect of having given his Church upon earth 
a code of law, — the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ment, — and of empowering and requiring her to regulate her 
affairs by that code alone. 

Secondly : She has been eminently a Church of the people. 

What she claimed, she claimed not as a hierarchy, not as a 

clerical corporation, but as a congregation of Christians. The 

minister had his place ; the member had his place. The 

1* 



VI PREFACE. 

powers and rights of each were held equally from Christ the 
King. 

By both these characteristics the Church of Scotland has 
been distinguished from the Church of England. 

The southern Establishment was the work of kings and 
statesmen. The constitution of the Church grew gradually 
into shape and form as part of the civil constitution of the 
realm. Slight share in its construction was taken by 
divines ; — no share at all by the people. It was Henry, it 
was Burleigh, it was Elizabeth, who were the nursing fathers 
and nursing mothers of the Church of England. Ecclesias- 
tical personages aspired to nothing higher than being their 
recognized and rewarded functionaries. From their position 
as divines they derived no commanding or regulating author- 
ity. The mechanism of the Church of Rome occupied the 
land, and they complacently lent their aid while it was 
adapted to the circumstances of a civil popedom. The ques- 
tion of the original constitution of the Christian Church was 
not forced upon them by circumstances, and they were well 
content to evade it. The result was, that independent spir- 
itual jurisdiction was conclusively withheld from the Church 
of England. The Act of Supremacy bound her to the state. 

The part played by the people in the construction of the 
Church of England was still more insignificant than that 
played by divines. The Tudor sovereigns — able, energetic, 
imperious, proud by nature, proud in virtue of their prerog- 
ative — thought little of the feelings of the commonalty in 
promulgating their haughty decrees. The English — the most 



PREFACE. VII 

peaceable, long-suffering, and loyal of European nations — had 
not yet dreamed of asserting their dignity and rights against 
the majesty of monarchs. They did, indeed, at last awaken. 
When the sceptre was held by a race intellectually and 
morally inferior to the Tudors ; when loyalty and reverence 
had been sapped by contempt ; when nearly half a century 
of treacherous oppression had roused to irresistible fury the 
tremendous instincts of religion and natural justice, — the 
people of England showed themselves. The Puritans en- 
gaged in a struggle for two objects : civil liberty, and the 
reformation of religion. The civil constitution of England 
they vindicated in its ancient principles, and placed impreg- 
nably on its modern basis. But when the long and eventful 
conflict was at an end, the constitution of the Church of Eng- 
land remained essentially unchanged, and the Christian people 
were not recognized as one of its integral parts. 

The history of Scotland presents an entirely different 
ecclesiastical prospect. The vehement and impetuous nation 
north of the Tweed embraced the Reformation with a decis' 
ion and enthusiasm which brooked no half-measures. The 
Church of Rome was first of all overthrown from base to 
turret, and a platform found for a new construction. In 
rearing the new edifice, divines bore a chief, and statesmen a 
subordinate part. And these were divines who magnified their 
office ! They had learned in the school of Calvin to see the 
glitter of earthly crowns pale in the light of the sanctuary, 
to exalt the Church as the city of God upon earth, to set 
small store by human authority against the voice which they 



VIII PREFACE. 

believed they heard speaking direct from heaven. They 
invoked their Divine King to lay the foundation of His 
House. Ten centuries of prescription were less to them than 
one promise of Christ. They have been accused of narrow- 
ness, of fanaticism, of violence ; but all the world has recog- 
nized them as men of intrepid courage, of iron will, of high 
devotion, who quailed not in the presence of kings. Knox, 
Melville, Henderson, were very different personages from 
those politic and temporizing prelates who showed a courtier- 
like subservience to Henry, or trembled lest Elizabeth should 
unfrock them. As churchmen, they would have no king but 
Christ. They practically vindicated the doctrine of Christ's 
Headship, by securing that no Act of Supremacy was inscribed 
in the statute-book of Scotland. And they had a nation at 
their back, — an earnestly, ardently believing nation, — "a 
nation," says Carlyle, " of heroes." The circumstances of 
their position were such that they could not, and their char- 
acter and the doctrines of their Church were such that, under 
any circumstances, they assuredly would not have overlooked 
the people. The consent of the congregation — laid down by 
Calvin in the Institutes as an essential element in the appoint- 
ment of ministers — was given effect to in the ecclesiastical 
constitution by means of the Call. And thus the Church of 
Scotland became known to history and to fame as having rec- 
onciled the seeming contradictions of an intensely ecclesiastical 
and a broadly popular character. 

Under these auspices the General Assembly of the Kirk 
came into existence. Implicitly confided in by the people,- 



PREFACE. IX 

and representing even the laity to a far larger extent than 
the Scottish Parliament, it exercised throughout the seven- 
teenth century a commanding influence in all the affairs of 
the kingdom. The objects for which it contended were the 
same as those of the early English Puritans ; but its victory 
was more complete than theirs. At the Revolution settlement, 
it appeared that both the civil and religious liberties of Scot- 
land were vindicated. In the Treaty of Union, which speedily 
followed, the constitution of the Church of Scotland was care- 
fully guarded. The Act of Supremacy was confined to the 
southern part of the island, and no provision was made for the 
introduction of patronage into Scotland. In possession of a 
spiritual independence never claimed by the sister Establish- 
ment, and with the rights of the Christian people intact, the 
Kirk of Knox and Melville, the Kirk of the Westminster 
Confession and the Solemn League and Covenant, — the old, 
indomitable Kirk of Scotland, — rested from her labors. 

All this was to Hugh Miller a faith deliberately ratified 
by his intellect, and enshrined with dearest and most exalt- 
ing associations in his heart of hearts. Patriotism and 
affectionate reverence — the feeling with which an English- 
man regards the Long Parliament, and the feeling with which 
a Jew of old regarded the Temple on Mount Moriah — were 
combined in the emotions with which he contemplated his 
Church. To stand in spirit by the side of her great men ; 
to follow her with compassionate or exulting sympathy from 
reverse to reverse, from triumph to triumph ; to draw his 
breath deep in unutterable execration at thought of the apos- 



X PREFACE. 

tate Lauderdale or the bloodhound Claverhouse ; to know 
her for his country's Church, when her canopy was the mist of 
the hill, and the trampling of the troopers broke in upon the 
lifted psalm, as well and as proudly as when she bearded mon- 
archs, and set her foot on the necks of her enemies, — this 
seemed involved in the fact of his being a Scotchman. That a 
fundamental principle of her constitution, such as the right of 
the Christian people to have no minister intruded upon them, 
after being preserved through the storms and treacheries of a 
century, should be set aside by a Patronage Act smuggled by 
Tories through the British Parliament in contravention of the 
Treaty of Union, was to him an absurd idea. He looked 
upon the Patronage Act as a galling fetter, which her creed 
and her history pledged the Church to cast off. He sympa- 
thized with the Seceders of the last century in their refusal to 
wear it. He assented to the petition against it sent up year by 
year to Parliament from the General Assembly, until Moderate 
ascendency culminated under Robertson, and the Church, for 
the first time in her history, winked at her own humiliation. 
In the evangelical minority of the eighteenth century, headed 
by Erskine, he recognized his beloved Church as cordially and 
as confidently as in the homeless hill-men who clung to Peden 
and to Cameron in the seventeenth. When that minority 
swelled into a majority, — when the ancestral principles of the 
Church of Scotland shone out once more broad and clear, — 
there was no man better fitted to understand the position of 
the Establishment — no man more ready to support and defend 
her — than Hugh Milier. 



PREFACE. XI 

The struggle between the Church of Scotland and the civi] 
authority, which ended in the Disruption, was inaugurated by 
the parsing of the Veto Act by the Church. The conflict took 
shape and character throughout from that celebrated enact- 
ment. In daring to put into the hands of the people a veto on 
any minister presented to a. charge, but not accepted by the 
congregation, the Church vindicated both her ancient and dis- 
tinctive principles. She proclaimed that the rights of the 
Christian people were inalienably secured to them ; and she 
asserted her power, in face of an existent act of Parliament, 
to give those rights effect Non-intrusion and spiritual inde- 
pendence were thus linked together throughout the Ten Years' 
Conflict. 

That Hugh Miller viewed the contest in this manner, we 
know from his own words. "The contendings of the Seces- 
sion in the last century," he wrote, shortly before the Dis- 
ruption, "involved mainly the Non-intrusion principle. The 
contendings of our Presbyterian fathers in the century previous 
involved mainly the great doctrine that Christ is the only 
Head of the Church, and that, in the things which pertain to 
his kingdom, she owns no other Lord but Him. And in our 
present struggle, both these twin principles of strength are 
united." 

The present volume consists of two celebrated pamphlets 
written by Hugh Miller in defence of the contending Church, 
and of a gleaning — a scanty and desultory gleaning — from 
his articles in the Witness newspaper on the Church question. 
These will assuredly convey no adequate idea of his part in 



XII PREFACE. 

the Disruption controversy. It was only here and there that 
an article could be selected. To have taken all that displayed 
high excellence, — all that were noble in eloquence, keen and 
brilliant in satire, powerful in invective, or masterly in argu- 
ment, — would have been to fill many volumes. It is likely 
that articles which created a particularly wide and deep sensa- 
tion at the time, and are still vividly remembered, will be 
missed. To revive the interest which made them effective, — to 
call from oblivion some speech, pamphlet, or party manoeuvre, 
agitating all minds at the time, and now everlastingly forgotten, 
— was impossible. It has been carefully endeavored, also, to 
avoid inflicting pain upon any still alive who were engaged in 
the conflict, or upon the surviving relatives of those who have 
died. Controversy is controversy ; and Hugh Miller fought 
for his Church with the earnestness and vehemence of his cov- 
enanting fathers at Marston Moor or Drumclog. But when 
the dust of the fight is laid, and its din is over, — when the 
grave has closed over so many of the combatants, — it would be 
useless, and it would be ungracious, to reawaken its animosities. 

Of the influence exerted upon the public mind of Scotland 
by Hugh Miller's articles in the Witness on the Church ques- 
tion, there are thousands still living who can speak. A year 
or two before the Disruption, I passed a winter in a Highland 
manse. I was too young to form a distinct idea of the merits 
of the dispute. But there was a sound then in the air which 
I could not help hearing. It seems as if it were in my ears 
still. Never have I witnessed so steady, intense, enthralling 
an excitement. And I have no difficulty, even at this distance, 



PREFACE. XIII 

in discriminating the name which rung loudest through the agi- 
tated land. It was that of Hugh Miller, — the people's friend, 
champion, hero. There are men, there are family circles, to 
whom certain of these articles will suggest pathetic recollec- 
tions. A sentence, a word, will recall the olden time, with its 
hallowed, its tender, its stirring associations : the fireside of 
the manse, round which member after member of the family- 
grew up ; the garden, with its old fruit-trees and familiar walks ; 
the broad, bright, placid landscape, stretching from the manse- 
door ; the unadorned church close at hand, with the household 
graves around it ; — and then the eye will see to read no more. 

"With all its defects, this volume will illustrate with some 
comprehensiveness the manner in which Hugh Miller took 
part in the Disruption Controversy. It will show to what a 
marvellous point of perfection he was equipped for the work 
he had to do : how familiar to him was the whole range of 
Scottish history, ecclesiastical and literary ; how accurately he 
had appreciated Presbyterianism as an influence in all prov- 
inces of Scottish life ; how perfectly he understood the rela- 
tions of parties in the Church and kingdom of Scotland, at 
every stage of the national history. He is seen assailing 
patronage from every point, — exposing its unconstitutional 
introduction, its disgraceful history, its pernicious practical 
effects. The volume contains also his deliberate and emphatic 
testimony to the doctrine of the Headship of Christ. Though 
dead, he may still be heard speaking to the people of Scotland 
on that sacred and momentous theme. The following sentences, 

in which he described the impression made upon certain per- 

2 



XIV 



PREFACE. 



sons by attempts practically to insist upon the doctrine in ques- 
tion, read in the light of present occurrences and prevailing 
frames of mind, may seem almost prophetic: — "As a practical 
rule of conduct, that sets itself in opposition to secular interests, 
judicial interdicts, and the decisions of magistrates, they can- 
not and will not tolerate it. Their merely nominal belief in 
Christianity — held as so respectable and so praiseworthy at 
other times — always puts on, in such circumstances, its true 
character as simply no belief at all. Christ becomes to them 
a mere phantom King, unreal and invisible; and his kingly 
authority appears but as a mischievous and repulsive fiction, 
subversive of the principles of good government." 

And are these questions of spiritual independence and of 
non-intrusion, after all, but lingering phantoms, paling grad- 
ually, and sure to pass away in the light of progress ? Many 
think so, — many able, and not a few devout men. I think 
they err. That, in face of all the coercion which can possibly 
be brought to bear upon the subject, the genuine Presbyterians 
of Scotland will maintain both, need not be doubted. But may 
not England awake to a new interest in the rights of the Chris- 
tian people, and in the independence of the Church? May 
not the liberal and thinking part of the community, scandalized 
and distressed by such scenes as have recently occurred in a 
London church, ask whether the just and rational remedy for 
such a state of things is not to give congregations a voice in 
choosing their own ministers? And may not those in the 
Church of England who hold most closely by the principles of 
the Puritans bethink themselves whether they have not un- 



PREFACE. XV 

wisely lost sight of one doctrine professed by Cartwright m 
England, and by all the reformers in the northern part of the 
island, — the doctrine that Christ is King and Head of his 
Church, and that it is in the prince's province " to exercise no 
spiritual jurisdiction " ? 



It is hardly necessary to add a single word to the preced- 
ing, in order to render this volume intelligible to American 
readers. Stated in the simplest form, and apart from technical 
phraseology, the principles for which the Church of Scotland 
contended in the years preceding the Disruption of 1843 were 
these : — the right of congregations to choose their pastors, 
and the competence of a Church of Christ to manage her spir- 
itual and distinctive concerns in her own courts. In 1834 the 
Church of Scotland decreed that the will of congregations 
should form an essential element in the settlement of pastors. 
In the same year Lord Kinnoul, patron of the parish of Auch- 
terarder, in Perthshire, presented that living to Mr. Robert 
Young, preacher of the Gospel. The Call, or document signi- 
fying the assent of the congregation to the appointment of Mr. 
Young, was signed by three persons, only two of whom 
belonged to the parish. Dissatisfaction with the appointment 
was expressed by two hundred and eighty-seven out of three 
hundred and thirty, who, as being in full communion with the 
Church, were entitled to exercise the privilege. To install 



XVI PREFACE. 

Mr. Young, therefore, as minister of Auchterarder, would 
have been a clear case of intrusion, — exactly such a case as 
the Church had guarded against by her act of 1834. The 
Presbytery, in obedience to the law of the Church, refused to 
ordain him. Lord Kinnoul and Mr. Young had recourse to 
the Court of Session, to compel the Presbytery to proceed with 
the ordination. The court granted their request by a decision 
pronounced in 1838. The House of Lords confirmed this 
judgment in the following year. Between the decision of 
their Lordships and the occurrence of the Disruption no new 
principle emerged. A civil court had undertaken to force the 
Church of Scotland to ordain a minister, and to ordain him 
against the will of the people. Rather than submit, the Church 
cut her state moorings, and became free. To recount the inci- 
dents of the conflict would be neither interesting nor useful. 
For several years State and Church in Scotland were continu- 
ally in collision. Many attempts at reconciliation were made. 
But to understand the position taken up by each we need only 
to understand the Auchterarder case. 

PETER BAYNE. 



London, October 2, 1863. 



CONTENTS. 



THE HEADSHIP OF CHRIST. 

PA<jE 



Letter to Lord Brougham (June, 1839) 19 

The Whiggism op the Old School (August, 1839) ... 40 

The Literary Character op Knox (Mar. 4, 1840) ... 81 

Dr. Thomas M'Crie (June, 1840) . 93 

The Debate on Missions (October, 1841) ...... 144 



THE RIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE. # 

The Two Parties in the Church op Scotland (Jan. 15, 1840) . 200 

The Twin Presbyteries op Strathbogie (Feb. 5, 1840) . . 204 

The Two Students (Feb. 8, 1840) 209 

The Presentation to Daviot (Feb. 12, 1840) 215 

The Communicants op the North Country (Feb. 22, 1840) . 220 
Spiritual Independence the Distinctive Privilege op the 

Church op Scotland (March 7, 1840) 228 

The "Grasping Ambition" op the Non-Intrusionists (Mar. 25, 

1840) 230 

Popular Estimate of the Two Parties (April 25, 1840) . . 235 

The Earl of Aberdeen's Bill (May 9, 1840) ... 241 

The Scotch People and the Presbyterian Church (May 20, 

1840) • r . 248 



XVIII 



CONTENTS . 



PAGE 

Moderatism Popular, Where and Why (June 6, 1840) . . 251 
The Earl op Aberdeen v. the People op Scotland (June 17, 



1840) 256 

Debate in the Edinburgh Presbytery on Lord Aberdeen's 

Bill (July 4, 1840) 263 

Revival in Alness (Sept. 2, 1840) 270 

Conservatism on Revivals (Oct. 14, 1840) 279 

The Outrage at Marnoch (Jan. 27, 1841) 285 

Supplementar y Notes op the Settlement at Marnoch (Feb. 3, 

1841) .' ... 292 

Sketches of the General Assembly of 1841 (May 21, 1841) . 298 

Scottish Lawyers: their Two Classes (June 5, 1841) . . 335 

The New Policy: Evangelical Moderates (Sept. 14, 1841) . 339 

Moderatism: some op the Better Classes (Sept. 22, 1841) , 347 

Prayer: the True and the Counterfeit (Dec. 29, 1841) . . 352 
Mr. Isaac Taylor on the Independence of the Church (Jan. 1, 

1842) 356 

Defence Associations (Jan. 8, 1842) 359 

Foreshadowings (February 2, 1842) 364 

Translations into Fact (February, 1842) 368 

The Two Conflicts (May 25, 1842) 391 

Tendencies (December, 1842, to May, 1843) « . . . 402 

Mr. Forsyth's " Remarks " (Jan. 14, 1843) 455 

State-Carpentry (May 17, 1843) 465 

The Disruption (May 20, 1843) . . 475 

The Close (June 1, 1843) . 482 

Union and its Principles (June 10, 1843) . ... 488 



Appendix— An outline of the more recent history of the controversy, 
with a statement of the " Cardross Case." 



THE 



HEADSHIP OF CHRIST. 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 

A volume consisting of the principal contributions made by 
Hugh Miller to the literature of the Ten Years' Conflict cannot be 
more appropriately introduced than with the celebrated pamphlet in 
which he first stepped forward to take that lead in the lay and 
popular championship of the Church which he thenceforth continued 
to hold. Having, as he informs us in the " Schools and School- 
masters," been deeply moved by the decision, adverse to the claims 
of the evangelical majority, delivered by the Court of Session in 
March, 1838, and by that of the House of Lords in 1839, he experi- 
enced an ardent aspiration to offer some aid to his Church in her 
hour of peril. The speech of Lord Brougham in the Upper Hou"se 
furnished the occasion required. " I tossed wakefully," says Mr. 
Miller, " throughout a long night, in which I formed my plan of taking 
up the purely popular side of the question ; and in the morning I 
sat down to state my views to the people, in the form of a letter 
addressed to Lord Brougham." He was at the time occupied with 
the duties of a bank office, but in the fulness of his heart the words 
flowed apace : in about a week the composition was finished. Being 
transmitted to Edinburgh, and brought by Mr. Kobert Paul under 
the notice of Dr. Candlish and other evangelical leaders, its imme- 



20 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



diate result was the appointment of Mr. Miller to the editorship 
of the then contemplated "Witness" newspaper. On being pub- 
lished, it ran rapidly through four editions, and was referred to in 
terms of high encomium by Mr. O'Connell on the one hand, and by 
Mr. Gladstone on the other. It is beyond doubt one of the most 
masterly performances of its illustrious author. The eloquence, at 
once impassioned in its earnestness and majestic in its calmness, and 
the comprehensiveness and clear depth, worthy of the statesman or 
the philosophic historian, by which it is characterized, impart to it 
an interest superior to all local or temporary circumstances. It is 
an essay, and one of high and permanent value, upon a question 
inextricably associated with what is noblest and most instructive in 
the history of Scotland. — Ed. 

My Loed : — 

I am a plain working man, in rather humble circum- 
stances, a native of the north of Scotland, and a member 
of the Established Church. I am acquainted with no 
other language than the one in which I address your lord- 
ship; and the very limited knowledge which I possess 
has been won slowly and painfully from observation and 
reflection, with now and then the assistance of a stray 
volume, in the intervals of a laborious life. I am not too 
uninformed, however, to appreciate your lordship's extraor- 
dinary powers and acquirements; and as the cause of free- 
dom is peculiarly the cause of the class to which I belong, 
and as my acquaintance with the evils of ignorance has 
been by much too close and too tangible to leave me indif- 
ferent to the blessings of education, I have been no careless 
or uninterested spectator of your lordship's public career. 
No, my lord, I have felt my heart swell as I pronounced 
the name of Henry Brougham. 

With many thousands of my countrymen, I have waited 
in deep anxiety for your lordship's opinion on the Auch- 
terarder case. Aware that what may seem clear as a 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



21 



matter of right may be yet exceedingly doubtful as a ques- 
tion of law, — aware, too, that your lordship had to decide 
in this matter, not as a legislator, but as a judge, — I was 
afraid that, though you yourself might be our friend, you 
might yet have to pronounce the law our enemy. And 
yet, the bare majority by which the case had been carried 
against us in the Court of Session, — the consideration, 
too, that the judges who had declared in our favor rank 
among the ablest lawyers and most accomplished men that 
our country has ever produced, — had inclined me to hope 
that the statute-book, as interpreted by your lordship, 
might not be found very decidedly against us. But of you 
yourself, my lord, I could entertain no doubt. You had 
exerted all your energies in sweeping away the Old S arums 
and East Retfords of the constitution. Could I once 
harbor the suspicion that you had become tolerant of the 
Old Sarums and East Retfords of the Church ? You had 
declared, whether wisely or otherwise, that men possessed 
of no property qualification, and as humble and as little 
taught as the individual who now addresses you, should be 
admitted, on the strength of their moral and intellectual 
qualities alone, to exercise a voice in the legislature of the 
country. Could I suppose for a moment that yon deemed 
that portion of these very men which falls to the share of 
Scotland unfitted to exercise a voice in the election of a 
parish minister ? or, rather, — for I understate the case, — 
that you held them unworthy of being emancipated from 
the thraldom of a degrading law, the remnant of a bar- 
barous code, which conveys them over by thousands and 
miles square to the charge of patronage-courting clergy- 
men, practically unacquainted with the religion they pro- 
fess to teach? Surely the people of Scotland are not so 
changed but that they know at least as much of the doc- 
trines of the New Testament as of the principles of civil 
government, and of the requisites of a gospel minister as 
of the qualifications of a member of Parliament ! 

You have decided against us, my lord. You have even 



22 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



said that we had better rest contented with the existing 
statutes, as interpreted by your lordship, than involve 
ourselves in the dangers and difficulties of a new enact- 
ment. Nay, more wonderful still, all your sympathies 
on the occasion seem to have been reserved for the times 
and the memory of men who first imparted its practical 
efficiency to a law under which we and our fathers have 
groaned, and which we have ever regarded as not only 
subversive of our natural rights as men, but of our well- 
being as Christians. Highly as your lordship estimates 
our political wisdom, you have no opinion whatever of our 
religious taste and knowledge. Is it at all possible that 
you, my lord, a native of Scotland, and possessed of more 
general information than perhaps any other man living, 
can have yet to learn that we have thought long and 
deeply of our religion, whereas our political speculations 
began but yesterday; that our popular struggles have 
been struggles for the right of worshipping God according 
to the dictates of our conscience, and under the guidance 
of ministers of our own choice ; and that, when anxiously 
employed in finding arguments by which rights so dear to 
us might be rationally defended, our discovery of the prin- 
ciples of civil liberty was merely a sort of chance-conse- 
quence of the search? Examine yourself, my lord. Is 
your mind free from all bias in this matter? Are you 
quite assured that your admiration of an illustrious rela- 
tive, at a period when your judgment was comparatively 
uninformed, has not had the effect of rendering his opinions 
your prejudices ? Principal Robertson was unquestionably 
a great man ; but consider in what way : great as a leader, 
— not as a "father in the Church," — it is not to ministers 
such as the Principal that the excellent among my coun- 
trymen look up for spiritual guidance amid the temptations 
and difficulties of life, or for comfort at its close ; great in 
literature, — not, like Timothy of old, great in his knowl- 
edge of the Scriptures, — aged men who sat under his 
ministry have assured me that, in hurrying over the New 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



23 



Testament, he had missed the doctrine of the atonement ; 
great as an author and a man of genius, — great in his 
enduring labors as a historian, — great in the sense in 
which Hume, and Gibbon, and Voltaire were great. 1 But 
who can regard the greatness of such men as a sufficient 
guarantee for the soundness of the opinions which they 
have held, or the justice or wisdom of the measures which 
they have recommended ? The law of patronage is in no 
degree the less cruel or absurd from its having owed its 
reenactment to so great a statesman and so ingenious a 
writer as Bolingbroke ; nor yet from its having received 
its full and practical efficiency from so masterly a historian 
and so thorough a judge of human affairs as Robertson ; 
nor yet, my lord, from the new vigor which it has received 
from the decision of so profound a philosopher and so 
accomplished an orator as Brougham. 

I am a plain, untaught man ; but the opinions which I 
hold regarding the law of patronage are those entertained 
by the great bulk of my countrymen, and entitled on that 
account to some little respect. I shall state them as clearly 
and as simply as I can. You are doubtless acquainted with 

l Is the writer's estimate of Dr. Robertson's religious character too low? 
Take, then, the estimate of William Wilberforce — a name to which even the 
high eulogiums of Lord Brougham can add nothing. In the " Practical View," 
chapter vi., there occurs the following passage: 

" It has also been a melancholy prognostic of the state to which we are pro- 
gressive, that many of the most eminent literati of modern times have been 
professed unbelievers ; and that others of them have discovered such lukewarm- 
ness in the cause of Christ as to treat with especial good-will, and attention, and 
respect, those men who, by their avowed publications, were openly assailing, or 
insidiously undermining, the very foundations of the Christian hope — consid- 
ering themselves as more closely united to them by literature than severed from 
them by the widest religious differences. It is with pain that the author finds 
himself compelled to place so great a writer as Dr. Robertson in this class. But, 
to say nothing of his phlegmatic account of the Reformation (a subject which 
we should have thought likely to excite in any one who united the character of 
a Christian divine with that of a historian, some warmth of pious gratitude for 
the good providence of God), — to pass over, also, the ambiguity in which he 
leaves his readers as to his opinion of the authenticity of the Mosaic chronology, 
in his Disquisitions on the Trade of India, — his letters to Mr. Gibbon, lately 
published, cannot but excite emotions of regret and shame in every sincere 
Christian." — Tage 304, fifth edition. 



24 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



that beautiful little piece of antique simplicity, drawn up 
by Knox, on the election of elders and deacons. It forms 
an interesting record, by an eye-witness, of the earliest 
beginnings of reformation in Scotland. At first, pious 
individuals, " brought, through the wonderful grace of God, 
to a knowledge of the truth, began to exercise themselves 
by reading of the Scriptures secretly," and to call the 
members of their own households around them to join 
with them in prayer. In the next stage a few neighboring 
families of this character learned to assemble themselves 
together to pray and to exhort, sometimes under the cloud 
of night in houses, sometimes in lone and sequestered hol- 
lows in the fields. Their numbers gradually increased, and 
that diversity of talent so characteristic of the human 
family, and so nicely adapted to man's social nature, began 
to manifest itself in this first germ of the Reformed Church 
in Scotland. To assign to individuals among them by the 
general voice that place for which nature and the Holy 
Spirit had peculiarly fitted them, was but a giving of effect, 
through the agency of man, to the will of God, and essen- 
tially necessary for the maintenance of decency and good 
order. "And so began that small flock," says the reformer, 
" to put themselves in such order as if Christ Jesus had 
plainly triumphed in the midst of them by the power of 
the Evangel ; and they did elect some to occupy the supreme 
place of exhortation and reading, and some to be elders 
and helpers to these for the oversight of the flock, and 
some to be deacons for the collection of alms to be dis- 
tributed to the poor of their own body. And of this small 
beginning is that order that now God, of his mercy, hath 
given unto us publicly within this realm." 

One stage more, and the history is complete. The 
devotions of the closet had passed into the family; the 
members of Christianized families had formed themselves 
into a church. But this process of germination and growth 
had not been confined to a single locality. The long win- 
ter was over; the vital principle was heaving under the 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



25 



clods of separate fields and widely distant valleys ; the deep 
sleep of ages had been broken ; the day-star had arisen ; 
the Spirit of God had moved upon the face of the waters ; 
many families had been enlightened — many churches had 
been formed. How was "the bond of unity "to be best 
preserved, and wise and equal laws established for the 
good of the whole ? " Wisdom," saith the Saviour, " is jus- 
tified of her children." The churches instructed their best 
and wisest to deliberate in council, — their learned and 
strong-minded, their tried and venerable men, whom they 
had chosen to be their guides and leaders, because God had 
chosen them first; and these met in assembly, each recog- 
nizing in each an equal and a brother, and in Christ the 
Head and Governor of the whole. The Scriptures were 
opened, that the "mind of God" might be known. They 
sought advice of the Reformed Churches abroad ; con- 
ferred with princes and magistrates at home ; enacted wise 
laws ; drew up books of order and of discipline ; framed 
Catechisms and Confessions of Faith. The God in whom 
they trusted breathed a spirit of wisdom into their coun- 
sels ; and the inestimable blessings of a pure and scriptural 
religion were thus secured to our land. Is the picture 
faithfully drawn ? Look at it, my lord. The Presbyterians 
of Scotland deem it a picture of their Church in her best 
estate; and believe that the one great object of her saints 
and martyrs in all their struggles with kings and patrons, 
priests and curates, leaders in the General Assembly and 
dragoons on the hill-side, has been to restore what of the 
original likeness had been lost, or to preserve what had 
been retained. 

Now, with many thousands of my countrymen, I have 
been accustomed to ask, Where is the place which patron- 
age occupies in this Church of the people and of Christ? 
I read in the First Book of Discipline (as drawn up by 
Knox and his brethren) that "no man should enter the 
ministry without a lawful vocation ; and that a lawful 
vocation standeth in the election of the people, examination 

3 



26 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



of the ministry, and admission by them both." I find in 
the Second Book, as sanctioned by our earlier Assemblies, 
and sworn to in our National Covenant, that as this liberty 
of election was observed and respected so long as the 
primitive Church maintained its purity, it should be also 
observed and respected by the Reformed Church of Scot- 
land ; and that neither by the king himself, nor by any 
inferior person, should ministers be intruded on congrega- 
tions contrary to the will of the people. I find patronage 
mentioned in this Second Book for the first time, and men- 
tioned only to be denounced as "an abuse flowing from the 
Pope and the corruption of the canon law," and as contrary 
to the liberty of election, the light of reformation, the word 
of God. Where is the flaw in our logic when we infer 
that the members of our Church constitute our Church, 
and that it is the part and right of these members in their 
collective capacity to elect their ministers ? I, my lord, 
am an integral part of the Church of Scotland, and of 
such integral parts, and of nothing else, is the body of this 
Church composed ; nor do we look to the high places of 
the earth when we address ourselves to its adorable Head. 
The Earl of Kinnoull is not the Church, nor any of the 
other patrons of Scotland. Why, then, are these men 
suffered to exercise, and that so exclusively, one of the 
Church's most sacred privileges ? You tell us of "existing 
institutions, vested rights, positive interests." Do we not 
know that the slaveholders, who have so long and so stub- 
bornly withstood your lordship's truly noble appeals in 
behalf of the African bondsmen, have been employing an 
exactly similar language for the last fifty years; and that 
the onward progress of man to the high place which God 
has willed him to occupy has been impeded at every step 
by " existing institutions, vested rights, positive interests " ? 
My grandfather was a grown man at a period when the 
neighboring proprietor could have dragged him from his 
cottage, and hung him up on the gallows-hill of the barony. 
It is not yet a century since the colliers of our southern 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



2? 



districts were serfs bound to the soil. The mischievous 
and intolerant law of patronage still presses its dead weight 
on our consciences. But what of all that, my lord ? Is it 
not in accordance with the high destiny of the species that 
the fit and the right should triumph over the established ? 

It is impossible your lordship can hold, with men of a 
lower order, that there is any necessary connection between 
the law of patronage and our existence as an Establishment. 
The public money can only be legitimately employed in 
furthering the public good ; and we recognize the improve- 
ment and conservation of the morals of the people as the 
sole condition on which our ministers receive the support 
of the state. Where is the inevitable connection between 
rights of patronage (which, as the law now exists, may be 
exercised by fools, debauchees, infidels) and principles such 
as these? Nay, what is there subversive of such principles 
in a Christian liberty of election as complete as that en- 
joyed of old by the first fathers of the Reformation, or 
exercised in the present day by our Protestant Dissenters? 
I may surely add, that what is good for the Dissenters in 
this matter cannot be very bad for us ; that I can find none 
of the much-dreaded evils of popular election — the divi- 
sions, the heart-burnings, the endless lawsuits, the domi- 
nancy of the fanatical spirit — exemplified in them; and 
that there can surely be little to censure in a principle 
which could have secured to them the labors of such min- 
isters as Baxter and Bunyan, Watts and Doddridge, Robert 
Hall, and Thomas M'Crie. Even you yourself, my lord, 
will hardly venture to assert that our Scottish patrons 
could have provided them with better or more useful cler- 
gymen than they have been enabled to choose for them- 
selves. 

But on these points we are not at issue with your lord- 
ship. You tell us, however, that we are protected against 
the abuses of patronage by the provision that patrons can 
present only qualified persons, — clergymen whose litera- 
ture the Church has pronounced sufficient, and their morals 



28 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



not bad. And when, under the suspension of our higher 
privileges, we challenge for ourselves the right of rejecting 
ministers thus selected without assigning our reasons, you 
ungenerously insinuate that we are perhaps anxious to 
employ this liberty in the rejection of good men, too strict 
in morals, and too diligent in duty to please our vitiated 
tastes. " Have a care, my lord." You are a philosopher 
of the inductive school. Look well to your facts. Put 
our lives to the question. Ascertain whether we are im- 
moral in the proportion in which we are zealous for this 
privilege; determine whether our clergymen are lax and 
time-serving in the degree in which they are popular ; and 
see, I beseech your lordship, that the scrutiny be strict. 
We challenge, as our right, liberty of rejection without 
statement of reasons. What is there so absurd in this as to 
provoke ridicule ? or what so unfair as to justify the impu- 
tation of sinister design ? It is positive, not negative, char- 
acter we expect in a clergyman. We are suspicious of the 
" not proven ; " we are dissatisfied with even the " not 
guilty : " we look in him for qualities which we can love, 
powers which we can respect, graces which we can revere. 
It matters not that we should have no grounds on which 
to condemn : we are justified in our rejection if we can- 
not approve. 

But we are aware, my lord, that there is a noiseless 
though powerful under-current of objection, which bears 
more heavily against us in this matter than all the thousand 
lesser tides that froth and bubble on the surface. We are 
opposed by the prejudices of a powerful party, who see an 
inevitable connection between the exercise of the popular 
voice and what I shall venture to define for them as a fa- 
naticism according to the standards of our Church. We 
have but one Bible and one Confession of Faith in our 
Scottish Establishment ; but we have two religions in it ; 
and these, though they bear exactly the same name, and 
speak nearly the same language, are yet fundamentally and 
vitally different. They belong, in fact, to the two very 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



29 



opposite classes into which all religions naturally divide. 
The one is popular, and has ever contended for the infu- 
sion of the popular principle into the Church as a necessary 
element; the other is exclusive, and has as determinedly 
struggled against it. The Logans, Homes, Blairs, Robert- 
sons, of the last age, may be regarded as constituting the 
fit representatives of the latter class. The other recog- 
nizes its master spirits — its beloved and much honored 
leaders — in our Thomsons and Chalmerses, our Knoxes 
and Melvilles, the fathers of the Secession, and the cham- 
pions of the Covenant. The infusion of the popular prin- 
ciple, while it would mightily strengthen the one class, 
would assuredly diminish, if not altogether annihilate, the 
other; and while the thousands which form the one reckon 
on it as their friend, the hundreds which compose the other 
hate and oppose it as their enemy. 

Now, there are important, though perhaps somewhat 
occult, principles couched in this circumstance, regarding 
which your lordship's opinion, as a philosopher, would be 
of great value, had you not already foreclosed the question 
in a very different character indeed. It will be found that 
all the false religions of past or of present times, which 
have abused the credulity or flattered the judgments of 
men, may be divided into two grand classes, — the natural 
and the artificial. The natural religions are wild and 
extravagant ; and the enlightened reason, when unbiassed 
by the influence of early prejudice, rejects them as mon- 
strous and profane. But they have unquestionably a strong 
hold on human nature, and exert a powerful control over 
its hopes and its fears. They are, like the oak or the chest- 
nut, the slow growth of centuries ; their first beginnings 
are lost in the uncertainty of the fabulous ages, and every 
addition they receive is fitted to the credulity of the pop- 
ular mind ere it can assimilate itself to the mass. The 
grand cause of their popularity, however, seems to consist 
in the human character of their gods ; for is it not accord- 

3* 



30 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



ing to the nature of man as a religious creature that he 
meet with an answering nature in Deity? 

The artificial religions, on the other hand, are exclusively 
the work of the human reason, and the God with which 
they profess to acquaint us is a mere abstract idea, — an 
incomprehensible essence of goodness, power, and wisdom. 
The understanding cannot conceive of him except as a 
first great cause — as the mysterious source and originator 
of all things ; and it is surely according to reason that he 
should be thus removed from that lower sphere of con- 
ception which even finite intelligences can occupy to the 
full. But in thus rendering him intangible to the under- 
standing, he is rendered intangible to the affections also. 
Who ever loved an abstract idea, or what sympathy can 
exist between human minds and an intelligent essence 
infinitely diffused ? And hence the cold and barren inef- 
ficiency of artificial religions. They want the vitality of 
life. They want the grand principle of motive ; for they 
can lay no hold on those affections to which this prime 
mover in all human affairs can alone address itself. They 
may look well in a discourse or an essay ; for, like all 
human inventions, they may be easily understood and 
plausibly defended ; but they are totally unsuited to the 
nature and the wants of man. 

Now, is it not according to reason and analogy that the 
true religion should be formed, if I may so express myself, 
on a popular principle ? Is it not indispensable that the 
religion which God reveals should be suited to the human 
nature which God has made ? Artificial religions, with all 
their minute rationalities, are not suited to it at all, and there- 
fore take no hold on the popular mind ; natural religions, 
with all their immense popularity, are not suited to improve 
it. It is Christianity alone which unites the popularity of 
the one class with the rationality and more than the purity 
of the other — that gives to Deity, as the man Christ Jesus, 
his strong hold on the human affections, and restores to 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



31 



him, in his abstract character as Father of all, the homage 
of the understanding. 

Question the principle as you please, but look, I beseech 
you, to the fact. Who was that most popular of all 
preachers, whom the immense multitudes of Judea fol- 
lowed into waste and solitary places, and of whom it is 
so expressly told that the "common people heard him 
gladly"? And what the religion taught by the twelve 
unlettered men, whose labors revolutionized the morals 
of the world ? Christianity, in its primitive integrity, is 
essentially a popular religion ; and what we complain of 
in the Churchmen opposed to the popular voice is, that 
they have divested it of this vital principle. What God 
has done in the framing of it they undo in the preaching 
of it ; they impart to it all the cold inefficacy of an arti- 
ficial religion ; they tell us well-nigh as much of the beauty 
of virtue as Plato could have done ; of the incarnation or 
the atonement they tell us well-nigh as little, or tell as 
if they told it not; and what wonder if they should be 
left to exhibit their minute and feeble rationalities to bare 
walls and empty benches, and to dread in the popular 
principle the enemy which is eventually to cast them out 
of the Church ? We are acquainted with our New Testa- 
ments, and demand that our ministers give that prominence 
and space to the peculiar doctrines of Christianity which 
we find assigned to them in the epistles of Paul and of 
Peter, of James and of John. 

I have striven, my lord, to acquaint myself with the 
history of my Church. I have met with a few old books, 
and have found time to read them ; and, as the histories 
of Knox, Calderwood, and Wodrow have been among the 
number, I do not find myself much at the mercy of any 
man on questions connected with our ecclesiastical institu- 
tions, or the spirit which animated them. Some of the 
institutions themselves are marked by the character of the 
age in which they were produced ; for we must not forget 
that the principles of toleration are as much the discovery 



32 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



of a later time as those principles on which we construct 
our steam-engines. But the spirit which lived and breathed 
in them was essentially that "spirit with which Christ 
maketh his people free." Nay, the very intolerance of our 
Church was of a kind which delighted to arm its vassals 
with a power before which all tyranny, civil or ecclesias- 
tical, must eventually be overthrown. It compelled them 
to quit the lower levels of our nature for the higher. It 
demanded of them that they should be no longer immoral 
or illiterate. It was the Reformed Church of Scotland 
that gave the first example of providing that the children 
of the poor should be educated at the expense of the state- 
Not Henry Brougham himself could have been more zeal- 
ous in sending the schoolmaster abroad. But ignorance, 
superstition, immorality, above all, an intolerance of an 
entirely opposite character, jealous of the knowledge and 
indifferent to the good of its vassals, were by much too 
strong for it ; and there were times when the Church could 
do little more than testify against the grinding tyranny 
which oppressed her, and to the truth and justice of her 
own principles ; and not even this with impunity. I have 
perused, by the light of the evening fire, whole volumes 
filled with the death-testimonies of her martyrs. Point 
me out any one abuse, my lord, against which she has 
testified oftener or more strongly than that of patronage, 
or any one privilege for which she has contended with a 
more enduring zeal than that for which our General As- 
sembly is contending at this day. Moulding her claims 
according to the form and pressure of the opposition from 
without, — casting them at one time into a positive, at 
another into a negative form, — asserting at one time a 
free election, at another a non-intrusion principle, — we 
find her, on this great question, perseveringly firm and 
invariably consistent ; and we regard the abolition of pat- 
ronage, and the recognition of the popular right, as entirety 
a consequence of that dominancy of just and generous 
principle which was in part a cause and in part an effect 



LETTEE TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



33 



of the Revolution, as we do any of the other great liberties 
which the Revolution has secured to us ; nor does the very 
opposite opinion expressed by your lordship weigh more 
with us in this matter than if it had proceeded from the 
puniest sophist that ever opposed himself to the spread of 
education or the emancipation of the slave. 

Twenty-one years passed, during which the Church, in 
the undisputed possession of her hard-earned privileges, 
was slowly recovering from the state of weakness and 
exhaustion induced by her sufferings in the previous 
period. And well and wisely were these privileges em- 
ployed. Differences inevitably occur wherever man enjoys 
the blessings of liberty, civil or ecclesiastical; but during 
these twenty-one years there were few heats or divisions, 
and no schisms, in the Scottish Church. Such, at least, is 
the view of the matter given us in that life of Wodrow 
affixed to the late edition of his history; and sure I am 
that it tenders its information in a better spirit than that 
of any of the acts of Parliament which disgraced the latter 
years of Queen Anne. But a time had arrived in which no 
privilege was to be respected for its justice, or spared for 
its popularity, and in which our governors were to pursue 
other and far different objects than the good of the people 
or the peace of the Church. The Union had sunk the 
Presbyterian representation of Scotland into a feeble and 
singularly inefficient minority. Toryism, in its worst form, 
acquired an overpowering ascendency in the councils of 
the nation ; Bolingbroke engaged in his deep-laid con- 
spiracy against the Protestant succession and our popular 
liberties ; and the law of patronage was again established. 
But why established? On this important point your lord- 
ship's great historical knowledge seems to have deserted 
you at once ; there was a total lapse of memory, and all 
that remained for your lordship, in the peculiar circum- 
stances of the case, was just to take the law's own word 
for the goodness of the law's own character. Was it not 
sufficiently fortunate in its historians? Smollett, ere he 



34 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



composed his English History, had abandoned his whig 
principles; Burnet was an Episcopalian and a bishop; Sir 
Walter Scott a staunch tory, and full of the predilections 
and antipathies of his party. But all the three, my lord, 
were honest and honorable men. Smollett would have 
told your lordship of the peculiarly sinister spirit which 
animated the last Parliament of Anne ; of feelings adverse 
to the cause of freedom which prevailed among the peo- 
ple when it was chosen ; and that the act which reestab- 
lished patronage was but one of a series, all bearing on an 
object which the honest Scotch member, who signified his 
willingness to acquiesce in one of these on condition that 
it should be designated by its right name, — An Act for 
the Encouragement of Immorality and Jacobitism in 
/Scotland, — seems to have discovered. The worthy Bishop 
is still more decided. Instead of triumphing on the occa- 
sion, he solemnly assures us that the thing was done 
merely " to spite the Presbyterians, who from the beginning 
had set it up as a principle that parishes had, from war- 
rants in Scripture, a right to choose their ministers," and 
" who saw, with great alarm, the success of a motion made 
on design to weaken and undermine their Establishment;" 
and the good Sir Walter, notwithstanding all his tory 
prejudices, is quite as candid. He tells us that Jacobitism 
prevailed in Scotland more among the upper than the 
lower classes; and that 'Hhe act which restored to patrons 
the right of presenting clergymen to vacant churches was 
designed to render the Churchmen more dependent on the 
aristocracy, and to separate them in some degree from 
their congregations, who could not be supposed to be 
equally attached to or influenced by a minister who held 
his living by the gift of a great man, as by one who was 
chosen by their own free voice." You see your lordship 
might have learned a little, even from writers such as 
these. Historical evidence is often of a vague and inde- 
terminate character; there are disputed questions of fact 
which divide the probabilities in directions diametrically 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



35 



opposite ; but on the question before us it is comparatively 
easy to decide. The law which reestablished patronage in 
Scotland, which has rendered Christianity inefficient in 
well-nigh half her parishes, which has separated some 
of her better clergymen from her Church, and many of her 
better people from her clergymen — the law through which 
Robertson ruled in the General Assembly, and which 
Brougham has eulogized in the House of Lords, — that 
identical law formed, in its first enactment, no unessential 
portion of a deep and dangerous conspiracy against the 
liberties of our country. 

There is, my lord, a statesman of the present day, quite 
as eminent as Bolingbroke, who is acting, it is said, a 
somewhat similar part. It is whispered that not only can 
he decide according to an unpopular and unjust law, which 
he secretly condemns, but that he can also praise it as 
good and wise, and stir up its friends (men of a much 
narrower range of vision than himself) to give it full force 
and efficacy ; and all this with the direct view of destroy- 
ing a venerable institution on which this law acts. Now, 
I cannot credit the insinuation, for I believe that the very 
able statesman alluded to is an honest man ; but I think 
I can see how he might act such a part, and act it with 
very great effect. At no previous period were the popular 
energies so powerfully developed as in the present ; at no 
former time was it so essentially necessary that institution's 
which desire to live should open themselves to the infusion 
of the popular principle. Shut them up in their old chrys- 
alis state from this new atmosphere of life, and they 
inevitably perish. And these, my lord, are truths which I 
can more than see — I can also feel them. I am one of 
the people, full of the popular sympathies — it may be, 
of the popular prejudices. To no man do I yield in the 
love and respect which I bear to the Church of Scotland. 
I never signed the Confession of her Faith, but I do more 
— I believe it; and I deem her scheme of government at 
once the simplest and most practically beneficial that has 



36 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



been established since the time of the apostles. But it is 
the vital spirit, not the dead body, to which I am attached; 
it is to the free popular Church, established by our re- 
formers, not to an unsubstantial form or an empty name, 
a mere creature of expediency and the state; and had 
she so far fallen below my estimate of her dignity and 
excellence as to have acquiesced in your lordship's de- 
cision, the leaf holds not more loosely by the tree when 
the October wind blows highest, than I would have held 
by a church so sunk and degraded. And these, my lord, 
are the feelings, not merely of a single individual, but of a 
class, which, though less learned, and, may be, less wise, 
than the classes above them, are beyond comparison more 
numerous, and promise, now that they are learning to 
think, to become immensely more powerful. Drive our 
better clergymen to extremities on this question, — let but 
three hundred of them throw up their livings, as the 
Puritans of England and the Presbyterians of our own 
country did in the times of Charles II., — and the Scottish 
Establishment inevitably falls. Your lordship is a saga- 
cious and far-seeing man. How long, think you, would 
the English Establishment survive her humbler sister? 
and how long would the monarchy exist after the extinc- 
tion of both ? 

You have entertained a too favorable opinion of the 
Scottish Church, and she has disappointed your expecta- 
tions. Scotland is up in rebellion ! The General Assem- 
bly refuse to settle Mr. Young. Take your seat, my lord, 
and try the members of this refractory court for their new 
and unheard-of offence. They believe " that the principle 
of non-intrusion is coeval with the existence of the Church, 
and forms an integral part of its constitution." Their con- 
sciences, too, are awakened on the subject; they see that 
forced settlements have done very little good, and a great 
deal of harm; and that intruded ministers have been the 
means of converting few souls to Christ, and have, it is 
feared, in a great many instances, been unconverted them- 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



37 



selves. They have, besides, come to believe, with their 
fathers of old, that God himself is not indifferent in the 
matter, and are fearful lest "haply they should be found 
fighting against him." And in this assembly, my lord, there 
are wise and large-minded men — men admired for their 
genius, and revered for their piety, wherever the light 
of learning or religion has yet found its way. Now, a 
certain law of the country, which was passed rather more 
than a hundred and twenty years ago, through the influ- 
ence of very bad men, and for a very bad purpose, has 
demanded that this assembly proceed forthwith to impose 
on a resisting people a singularly unpopular clergyman. 
And the assembly have refused; courteously and hum- 
bly, 'tis true, but still most firmly. Give to this unpopular 
clergyman, they say, all the emoluments of the office. We 
lay no claim to these ; we have no right to them what- 
ever; nay, we hold even our own livings by sufferance, 
and you have the. power to take them from us whenever 
you please. But we must not force this unpopular clergy- 
man on the people : our consciences will not suffer us to 
do it ; and as the laws which control our consciences 
cannot be altered, whereas those which govern the country 
are in a state of continual change, suffer us, we beseech 
you, to confer with the makers of those changing laws, that 
this bad law may be made so much better as to agree with 
the fixed law of our consciences. Now, such, my lord, is 
the heinous offence committed by these men. You could 
not believe they were so wicked; you could imagine the 
crime itself, but not in connection with them ; you said it 
was indecorous, preposterous, monstrous, to believe that 
they could be so wicked. But you did ill to speak of 
Christ on the occasion. It is against Bolingbroke's law, 
not the law of Christ, that these men have offended. 

Nay, my lord, you should have known the Church of 
Scotland better. Consult her history, and see whether 
she has not as determinedly opposed herself to wicked 
laws as to wicked men. The very act which first indicated 

4 



38 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



her existence as a Church was her opposition to the law. 
And fearfully did she suffer for it. The law persecuted 
her children to death, — her Patrick Hamiltons, her George 
Wisharts, her Walter Mills, — and scattered their ashes to 
the winds. But there was a law to which she was not 
opposed — a fixed and immutable law ; and God fought 
for her, and she waxed mighty in the midst of her great 
suffering ; and at length, when her fierce and cruel perse- 
cutors had gone to their place, the unjust and intolerant 
law against which she had so long struggled in sorrow and 
great weakness was expunged from the statute-book. His- 
tory tells me that, in all her after conflicts, it was not the 
Church that yielded to the law, but the law that yielded 
to the Church. Need I remind your lordship of her strug- 
gles in the days of Mary, of James, of Charles ? Need I 
say that, subsequent to the Restoration, she opposed her- 
self to the law for twenty-eight years together ; and that 
the graves which lie solitary among our hills, and the 
tombs which occupy the malefactors' corner in our public 
burying-grounds, remain to testify of the heavy penalty 
which she paid ? But the curse denounced against Cain 
of old fell on the unrighteous shedders of innocent blood : 
the descendants of our ancient monarchs became fugitive 
and vagabond on the face of the earth. The law to which 
our Church would not yield, yielded to her;, and that 
better law which your lordship so pointedly condemns as 
unworthy of the Revolution, but which thousands among 
the wise and good of my countrymen, and many, many 
thousands of humble individuals like myself, have been 
accustomed to regard as so entirely in its purest spirit, 
was made to occupy their place. We do not think the 
worse of our Church, my lord, for her many contests with 
the law ; not a whit the better of her opposers for their 
having had the law on their side. The public prosecutor 
in the time of Charles II. was perhaps as able a lawyer as 
even your lordship, but we have been accustomed to 
execrate his memory as "the bloody Mackenzie." 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 



39 



The Church has offended many of her noblest and wealth- 
iest, it is said, and they are flying from her in crowds. 
Well, what matters it ? — let the chaff fly ! We care not 
though she shake off, in her wholesome exercise, some of 
the indolent humors which have hung about her so long. 
The vital principle will act with all the more vigor when 
they are gone. She may yet have to pour forth her life's 
blood through some incurable and deadly wound ; for do 
we not know that though the Church be eternal, churches 
are born and die ? But the blow will be dealt in a differ- 
ent quarrel, and on other and lower ground, — not when 
her ministers, for the sake of the spiritual, lessen their hold 
of the secular; not when, convinced of the justice of the 
old quarrel, they take up their position on the well-trodden 
battle-field of her saints and her martyrs ; not when they 
stand side by side with her people, to contend for their 
common rights, in accordance with the dictates of their 
consciences, and agreeably to the law of their God. The 
reforming spirit is vigorous within her, and her hour is not 
yet come. 

I am, my lord, with profound respect, 
Your lordship's most humble, 

Most obedient servant, 

HUGH MILLER. 

Cromarty, June, 1839. 



WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL, Etc. 



" So filled was my mind with our ecclesiastical controversy, that, 
while yet unacquainted with the fate of my first brochure, I was 
busily engaged with a second." In these words Mr. Miller has suf- 
ficiently indicated the relation of the following Essay to that which 
precedes it. It is essentially a continuation of the same discussion ; 
the question of patronage, in its historical, philosophical, and re- 
ligious aspect, being probed in a manner equally searching, and 
perhaps more deliberate and comprehensive. The absence of a 
personal opponent may detract somewhat from the vivacity of the 
composition ; but the place occupied by Lord Brougham on the pre- 
vious occasion is here partially held by the President of the Court 
of Session. The opinion pronounced by his lordship against the 
claims of the Church in the Lethendy case had exposed him to the 
particular animadversion of Mr. Miller. — Ed. 

One of the most important views of the Christian 
religion, in its political effects, which I have anywhere met 
with, is to be found in Voltaire. It occurs in his "Age of 
Louis XIV.," in the chapter devoted to Calvinism, and 
serves admirably to show, that though infidelity owes much 
to a false philosophy, it has nothing to hope from the true. 
The historian tells us, after descanting, in his usual style, 
on " the furious zeal, unknown to paganism," which first 



THE WHIGGXSM OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 



41 



gave rise to religious wars, that he had often endeavored 
to find out why the dogmatical spirit, so harmless in the 
schools of antiquity, should be productive of so many dis- 
orders among us. Fanaticism could not be the cause; 
men quite as fanatical as Christians did harm to none but 
themselves. The origin of this " new pest," he says, is 
rather to be found " in the republican spirit which animated 
the first churches. Those secret assemblies which, from 
their caves and recesses, braved the authority of the Ro- 
man emperors, formed by degrees a state within a state — 
a concealed republic within the empire." But after Con- 
stantine had drawn this stubborn religion from its retreat 
under ground, to place it on a level with the throne, there 
was a gradual softening of its character. Prosperity im- 
parted a new nature to it. " The authority attached to 
the great sees ran counter to the popular spirit ; " and in 
the end, so unlike itself did it become, that the powers 
which it had at first so determinedly opposed found in it 
eventually one of their surest and most efficient supports. 
But, in laying down its primitive character, it had also 
relinquished its original opinions; and no sooner, says the 
historian, were these revived by Luther, Zuinglius, and Cal- 
vin, than the ancient spirit also awoke. The identical 
principle which had opposed itself so determinedly to the 
tyranny of ancient Rome arose, from under the enormous 
mass which the guilt and superstition of ages had accumu- 
lated over it, to do battle with the despotisms of modern 
Europe. It opposed itself, though miserably oppressed and 
overborne, to the iron sway of Mary of England ; took 
up arms in our own country against Mary of Guise ; con- 
tended in France with the ghostly authority of kings and 
cardinals; and set limits in Germany to the encroach- 
ments of the emperors. 

It may be remarked in the passing, however, that what 
Voltaire has termed the republican spirit of Christianity 
is by no means exclusively republican ; for, though it has 
an inevitable tendency to limit the power of kings, it has 

4* 



42 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



none whatever to abrogate their office. On the contrary, 
the just restrictions which it imposes on their authority do 
not serve more as barriers to confine than as ramparts to 
protect them. And nothing, surely, can be more simple 
than the mode in which it acts, or more in accordance with 
the moral and intellectual dignity of man. Homer tells 
lis that the day which makes man a slave robs him of half 
his worth : Christianity more than doubles it. He who 
becomes a Christian, becomes, of necessity, subject to an 
immutable and paramount code, to which every other code 
must be subordinate ; his obedience to kings and magis- 
trates becomes, in consequence, a conditional obedience — 
his prince a limited prince ; he finds his subjection to every 
merely human law restricted by the simple but unanswer- 
able argument of Peter and John ; nor must his oath of 
allegiance interfere with the more sacred oath which, ac- 
cording to Pliny, binds him that he commit no evil. "What 
are the persecutions, whether those of our own or of other 
countries, but just so many illustrations of this principle in 
•its necessary attitude, — opposed alike to domination in the 
priest and to despotism in the ruler, — and of that deadly 
and exterminating hatred with which the antagonist prin- 
ciples, tyranny, bigotry, and the secular spirit, have ever 
regarded it ? The entire history of the Church is corrobo- 
rative of the view so unwittingly given us by Voltaire ; 
and in none of its various sections is the evidence more 
complete than in the history of our own. There is a little 
tract by John Knox — his "Admonition to his Dearly Be- 
loved Brethren, the Commonality of Scotland" — which 
is of itself sufficient to establish the point. It was first 
published in the year 1558 (only two months after Walter 
Miln had been cruelly put to death by the Archbishop of 
St. Andrews), and exhibits in a truly admirable light the 
large heart and masculine understanding of its extraordi- 
nary author. The truths which it embodies have since 
become common ; not so, however, the power with which 
these are enforced ; and with how deep and startling an 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



43 



effect must they have fallen for the first time on the ears 
of the serf and the vassal, sunk almost below the level of 
our nature by a hereditary course of servitude, that wears 
out the very mind, and with well-nigh all their natural 
rights as men absorbed in the exclusive and long-estab- 
lished privileges of their masters. 1 

l " Neither would I," says the reformer, in his address to the common people, 
" that ye should esteem the Reformation and care of religion less to appertain to 
you than to the rulers and judges set over you in authority. Beloved brethren, 
ye are God's creatures, created and formed to his own image and -similitude, 
for whose redemption was shed the most precious blood of the only beloved Sod 
of God, to whom he hath commended his gospel and glad tidings to be 
preached, and for whom he hath prepared the heavenly inheritance, if so that 
you do not obstinately refuse and disdainfully contemn the means which he 
hath appointed to obtain the same, namely, his blessed gospel, which he now 
ofFereth unto you, to the end that ye may be saved. For the gospel and glad 
tidings of the kingdom, truly preached, is the power of God to the salvation of 
every true believer. Which to credit and recieve, you, the commonality, are no 
less addebted than are your rulers and princes; for, albeit God hath ordained 
distinction and difference in the administration of civil policies betwixt kings 
and subjects, rulers and common people, yet in the hope of the life to come he 
hath made all equal. For as in Christ Jesus the Jew hath no greater prerogative 
than hath the Gentile, the man than hath the woman, the learned than the un- 
learned, the lord than the servant, but all are one in him, so is there but one 
way and means to attain to the participation of his benefits and spiritual grace, 

which is a lively faith working by charity Surely, then, it behooveth you 

to be careful and diligent in this so weighty a matter, lest that ye, contemning 
the occasion which God now ofFereth, find not the like again, even although that 
ye seek after it with sighiugs and tears. And that ye be not ignorant of what 
occasion I mean, in few words I shall express it. 

"Not only I, but with me also divers godly and learned men, offer unto yon 
our labor, faithfully to instruct you in the ways of the Eternal, our God, and in 
the sincerity of Christ's gospel, which this day, by the pestilent generation of 
Antichrist, are almost hid from the eyes of men. We offer to jeopard our lives 
for the salvation of your souls, and by manifest Scriptures to prove that religion 
that amongst you is maintained by fire and sword, to be false, vain, and diabol- 
ical. We require nothing of you but that patiently ye will hear our doctrine, 
which is not ours, but the doctrine of salvation revealed to the world by the only 
.Son of God, and that ye mill examine our reasons by which we offer to prove 
the Papistical religion to be abominable before God; and, lastly, we require that 
by your poicer the tyranny of these cruel priests and friars may be bridled, till 
we have uttered our minds in all matters this day debatable in religion. If these 
things, in the fear of God, ye grant unto us, I am assured that of God ye shall 
be blessed, whatsoever Satan shall devise against you. But if ye contemn or 
refuse God, who thus lovingly offereth unto you salvation and life, ye shall 
neither escape plagues temporal, which shortly shall apprehend you, neither yet 
the torment prepared for the devil and his angels." 

The quotation is not too long. To use the scarcely more powerful language of 
Milton: "It was Knox himself, the reformer of a kingdom, that spake it; and 



44 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



There is another important principle involved in what 
has been termed the republican spirit of the first churches. 
The spread of political power as necessarily accompanies 
the spread of intelligence as the heat of the sun accompa- 
nies its light ; and it is quite as idle to affirm that the case 
should be otherwise as to challenge the law of gravitation, 
or any of the other great laws which regulate the govern- 
ment of the universe. If the progress of mind cannot be 
arrested, it is quite as impossible to arrest the growth of 
the power which necessarily accompanies it. Now, Chris- 
tianity is essentially an intellectual religion, which, by 
increasing the popular intelligence, adds necessarily to the 
popular power. It is a system not of rites and ceremonies, 
but of morals and doctrines, — of morals that exercise 
those useful faculties which find fit employment in regu- 

though his sentence seemeth of a venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal, 
and perchance not suited to every low decrepit humor of the time, yet who 
knoweth whether it might not have proceeded from the dictat of a Divine 
Spirit? " The whole passage is pregnant with what may be termed the political 
influences of Christianity, as recognized by our Saviour himself, when he de- 
clared that he had come not to send peace on the earth, but a sword. 

The concluding portion of this interesting little tract is conceived in the very 
vein in which Paul addressed himself to Felix, and rouses like the blast of a 
trumpet. The reformer speaks of perilous times — of blood spilt for the testi- 
mony of Christ by unjust princes and rulers who had set their faces against the 
truth — of proud and cruel Churchmen, embruted in their lusts. " Their lives," 
he says, " infect the air. The idolatry which openly they commit defileth the 
whole land. The innocent blood which they shed crieth for vengeance in the 
ears of our God ; and none among you do unfeignedly seek after any redress for 
such foul enormities. Will God in this behalf hold you as innocent? Be not 
deceived, dear brethren. God hath punished not only proud tyrants and cruel 
murderers, but also such as with them did draw the yoke of iniquity, whether 
by flattering their offences, obeying their unjust commandments, or winking at 
their manifold and most grievous oppressions; — all such, I say, God once pun- 
ished with the chief offenders. Be assured, brethren, that as he is immutable of 
nature, so will he not pardon you in that which he hath punished in others; and 
now the less because he hath plainly admonished you of the danger to come, and 
offered you his mercy before that he pour forth his wrath and displeasure on the 
gainsayer and the disobedient." The writer concludes with an emphatic prayer 
that his "dearly beloved countrymen" might "be partakers of the glorious 
inheritance prepared for such as refuse themselves, and fight under the banner 
of Christ Jesus in the day of this his. hot battle; and that, in deep consideration 
of the same, they might learn to prefer the invisible and eternal joys to the vain 
pleasures that are present." For these quotations see Oliver & Boyd's edition 
of Knox, 1816, vol. ii. pp. 259, 275, and 278. 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



45 



lating the human conduct, and of doctrines that, in their 
unexaggerated magnitude, fill, and more than fill, the 
widest grasp of the human understanding. There is scarce 
a question in the philosophy of mind of which at least the 
germ is not to be found in the Bible ; and instead of leav- 
ing these to be discussed at pleasure by a few intellectual 
natures, it renders the study of them in some degree 
imperative on all. The same revealed truths which, as 
rudiments of thought, serve to awaken the faculties, 
constitute that identical " mind of God," which it is the 
essential duty of all men to know. And hence it is that 
conversion, in so many instances, is scarcely less marked 
in its intellectual than in its moral effects, and that wher- 
ever the Christian religion is established in the integrity 
of its first promulgation, men in even the humblest condi- 
tion learn to reason and to observe. We find it stated by 
Locke, that among the Huguenots of France the common 
people were better instructed in their religion than even 
the higher classes in most of the other countries in Europe. 
We are told by Sir James Mackintosh, that " the uniform 
effect of Calvinism, in disposing its adherents to meta- 
physical speculation (which survives at times even the 
beliefs in which it originates), cannot be doubted to have 
influenced the mind of Butler." Christianity formed the 
sole learning of Bunyan. It constituted, in its reflex 
influences, the sole education of Burns. But by no class 
of writers, or no series of facts, is this sound princijjle bet- 
ter illustrated than by the history of the Reformed Church 
in Scotland. 

The Reformation found the great bulk of our people 
parcelled out, through the influence of the feudal system, 
into detached masses, — possessed, like so many machines, 
of a merely physical power, and ready to be employed, 
whether for good or evil, as the caprice of a few ill-regu- 
lated minds chanced to direct. Pageants and ceremonies, 
with a multitude of vague, ill-defined beliefs, to which 
there attached no discipline of purity, and the tendency of 



46 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



which was to deaden, not to stimulate the intellect, consti- 
tuted the entire religion of the country. But the "revival 
of the ancient opinions" led to a very different state of 
things ; partly, doubtless, through the more covert work- 
ings of the principle described, and partly through the 
educational institutions established for the direct purpose. 
The religion of the reformers was a religion which sought 
the light, and which, in calling upon the masses to reason 
and to judge, laid it down as a first principle, that "for 
the soul to be without knowledge is not good." The 
scheme of education drawn up by Knox and his brethren 
was at once the most liberal and comprehensive which the 
world had yet seen, and bears reference in all its pro- 
visions to that spiritual nature, the common inheritance 
of the species, on whose high level all men meet and are 
equal. It provided that even the humblest of our crafts- 
men and peasants should be furnished with the data neces- 
sary to just thinking, and brought acquainted with the 
rules which regulate the reasoning faculties. Almost all 
the knowledge which books could supply was locked up in 
the learned languages. It was appointed, therefore, " that 
young men who purposed to travel in some handicraft, or 
other profitable exercise, for the good of the common- 
wealth, should (after devoting a certain time to reading and 
the catechism) devote a certain time to grammar and the 
Latin tongue ; and then a certain time further to the study 
of the other tongues, and to the arts of philosophy." 1 It 
must have been surely a strange fanaticism that could have 
formed a system such as this. Despite the utmost efforts 
of the reformers, however, the system was only partially 
established, for its enemies were numerous and powerful. 
But the pure and intellectual religion in which it origi- 
nated had freer course ; and such were the effects of the 
latter, that in little more than half a century it had filled 
even the humblest cottages of our country with thinking 
men, who had learned to read and to pray over their 

1 " First Book of Discipline," chap. vir. part i. clause 5. 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 47 

Bibles. The fact is happily illustrated by the two great 
persecutions to which our Church has been subjected, — 
that which preceded the first establishment of the re- 
formed religion, and that of the reign of Charles II. The 
martyrs of the one were mostly men of rank and learning. 
Hamilton was the scion of a noble family, Wish art a gen- 
tleman and deeply learned, Miln a priest, Straiton well 
born and a person of erudition. The victims of the other, 
on the contrary, were taken, in most instances, from among 
our common people — our farmers, mechanics, and shop- 
keepers. The testimony of Bishop Burnet to the intelli- 
gence of this class, as adduced by the Rev. Andrew Gray, 
in his masterly pamphlet, is very conclusive. Burnet was 
one of six Episcopal divines employed by Leighton in the 
year 1670 to go among the people and combat their Pres- 
byterian prejudices ; but the mission proved, it would 
seem, of little effect. " We were indeed amazed," he 
states, " to see a poor community so capable of arguing on 
points of government, and on the bounds to be set to the 
power of princes in matters of religion. Upon all these 
topics they had texts of Scripture at hand, and were ready 
with their answers to anything which was said to them. 
And this measure of knowledge was spread among the 
very meanest of them, even their cottagers and their 
servants." We find evidence equally direct, though olf a 
somewhat different character, in the "death testimonies" 
preserved in such works as " Naphtali" and the "Cloud 
of Witnesses." Many of these were written by yeomen 
and mechanics, — by Glasgow shopkeepers, shoemakers 
from Edinburgh, and weavers from the Stewartry of Kirk- 
cudbright; and yet, though sufficiently humble regarded 
merely as compositions, there are none of them so imper- 
fect as not to embody the thoughts and give expression to 
the feelings of their respective authors. Be it remem- 
bered, too, that they are the productions of a period when 
it was no uncommon matter, in at least the northern parts 
of the kingdom, to find persons in the grade of gentlemen 
unable to sign their names. 



48 THE WHIGGISM OF TIIH3 OLD SCHOOL. 

The defects and errors of the Scottish Church in the 
earlier and better part of her history it is no difficult task 
to point out. We do not live among greater or better 
men than the Knoxes and Melvilles of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, or the Hendersons and Rutherfords of the seven- 
teenth ; but we live in an age considerably in advance of 
theirs. Let us remember, however, that the knowledge of 
truths which perchance we could never have discovered 
for ourselves does not entitle us to look down with any 
very marked contempt on the vigorous-minded worthies 
who flourished before their promulgation ; and that we 
would do well to enjoy with moderation the chance emi- 
nence which raises our dapper little persons over the giants 
who stand on a lower level. The age of Knox and of 
Craig was essentially a despotic age. The Church in which 
they had spent that earlier portion of their lives in which 
habits of thought and feeling are most readily formed, was 
inevitably and constitutionally a despotic Church. The 
principles of toleration were altogether the discovery of a 
later time. It is undeniable, too, that some of the better 
members of the Church, in her seasons of suffering, were 
goaded into blamable excesses by that exasperating spirit 
of persecution which, according to Solomon, maketh even 
wise men mad. It is equally undeniable that she must 
have included within her pale, in her times of triumph, a 
considerable amount of the volatile rascality which ever 
delights to attach itself to a dominant party. Do we not 
know that the blood-thirsty Lauderdale and the crafty and 
cruel Sharpe were at one period of their lives zealous and 
influential Covenanters ? Let us not confound, ."however, 
the excesses of either her true or her renegade members 
with her own proper acts, or the grosser spirit which some- 
times influenced her from without with the infinitely purer 
principle which dwelt within. Nor yet let us forget that 
the great bulk of our countrymen in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries had not attained to that full moral 
and intellectual stature which is incompatible with a state 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



49 



of tutelage and subserviency. We treat children after one 
fashion, and men after another, in even the freest states, 
and under the most equal laws. And in deciding regarding 
the spirit of the Scottish Church, there can be nothing 
more illiberal than to mix up into one heterogeneous idea 
two such opposite principles as the absolute rule of a 
schoolmaster, whose very vocation it is to forward the 
progress of the human mind, and the iron despotism of a 
tyrant, who, to accomplish his own base purposes, would 
plunge the millions into barbarism. Let our Church be 
tried, as we try the characters of our fellow-men, by the 
main scope of her conduct, and the intrinsic value and as- 
certained effects of her grand principles. Let us try her 
enemies and antagonists by the same rule, separating their 
general conduct from all such accidental circumstances as 
the beauty and fascinating elegance of Mary, the dignity 
under suffering of Charles I., or the military genius of 
Montrose and Dundee. It will be found that the Church 
has much to hope and nothing to dread from such a trial, 
— that ignorance, tyranny, cruelty, superstition, the ignoble 
selfishness that would sacrifice the welfare of the many to 
the little interests of the few, and criminally repress the 
moral and intellectual growth of the species, have ever 
formed the chief characteristics of her opponents, — that 
a regard for the souls of men, a zeal for the spread of 
knowledge, a love of liberty and of morals, an all-pervad- 
ing reverence for the law of God — in short, the "antient 
opinions," joined to the original spirit of Christianity, have 
ever constituted her own. 

The gist of the argument lies in least compass when we 
regard it simply as a question of history. The inevitable 
hostility of Christianity, in its purer forms, to irresponsible 
authority, however strengthened by ancient prejudice or 
unjust laws, arises, as has been shown, from two grand 
principles, — the recognition of a paramount code, to 
which every other code must yield, and an intellectual 
discipline, through which m3n are raised to a freedom and 

5 



50 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



dignity of thought incompatible with a state of political 
servitude. And what wonder that principles so formida- 
ble should have found bitter enemies in absolute kings 
and tyrannical nobles, men whose widely extended privi- 
leges were encroachments on the unalienable rights of the 
species ? Prerogative urged its claims on the one side, 
men asserted their rights on the other. But though such 
formed the actual merits of the controversy, they were 
otherwise stated and understood. The reformers contended 
that to Caesar should be rendered the things which were 
Caesar's, and nothing more ; and that they should be per- 
mitted to render directly unto God himself the things 
which pertained to God. Caesar contended, on the other 
hand, that he should be put in possession of the whole, — 
one part, of course, in his own proper right, the other in 
an assumed capacity of steward or middleman. The 
reformers maintained that their religion was a pure and 
scriptural religion, and that they could not in conscience 
receive any other. Caesar insisted on taking this scrip- 
tural religion from them, and setting what he deemed a 
better in its place — a religion whose laws he had made to 
agree with his own. In all history there are not three 
characters better or more generally understood than those 
of James and the two Charleses. We are as intimately 
acquainted with not only the general scope of their con- 
duct, but even their little individual peculiarities, as if our 
knowledge of them had been the result of personal obser- 
vation. Who will venture to affirm that any one of the 
three, even the alleged author of the Icon Basilike him- 
self, was actuated for a single day by that pure missionary 
spirit which can unhesitatingly sacrifice the lower regards 
of self to the glory of God or the general good of men ; 
or that they preferred the Episcopacy they were so zeal- 
ous to establish, to the Presbyterianism they would so fain 
have annihilated, merely because they deemed it more 
purely scriptural, or better suited to advance the true 
interests of their subjects? James, whose very considera- 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



51 



ble shrewdness was balanced by a singularly great amount 
of folly and weakness, and who was by much too vain to 
enjoy his wisdom in secret, divulged the principle on 
which both himself and his successors acted, in one of 
those " short speeches " which, according to Bacon, have 
the double quality of indicating men's real designs and 
of flying about like arrows. "Xo bishop, no king." 
The Episcopacy which these princes labored to introduce 
was virtually a modified Christianity, which, to use the 
language of Voltaire, "ran counter to the popular spirit," 
necessarily associated with the " antient opinions," now 
happily " revived." The institution of bishops was a 
piece of mere political machinery on which to rest the 
ghostly authority of the king. And the character of the 
men best suited for the office throws light, like that of the 
princes by whose authority they were appointed to it, on 
the secular nature of the purposes which they were in- 
tended to serve. We have been lately instructed by an 
eminent judge, on the strength of a Greek etymology, that 
this order of Churchmen and the Presbyterian superin- 
tendents <of our "First Book of Discipline " were in reality 
identical. Perhaps, however, a slight acquaintance with 
history might have stood his lordship in better stead on 
the occasion than even the nicest knowledge of Greek. 
The Scotchman knows very little of his Church who does 
not know that the more fitted a minister was to be a 
superintendent, the less fitted was he to be a bishop. The 
superintendent was a faithful and able clergyman, " a man 
endowed with singular graces," chosen by the people and 
his brethren to be, like the apostle of the Gentiles, " more 
abundant in labors" than men of ordinary gifts; to be a 
journey er from place to place, in districts where ministers 
were few ; to " preach at least thrice every week ;" to take 
note of crimes and defections; to "admonish where admo- 
nition was needed;" to give good counsel where it was 
required ; to consider how the " poor were to be provided 
for," the " youth instructed ; " to watch over the " manners 



52 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



of the people," the lives of ministers, the order of churches. 1 
The men best fitted to be bishops, on the contrary, were 
the Montgomeries, Adamsons, Sharpes — Judas Iscariots 
of the Church. It was essential that the Scotch superin- 
tendent should have much religion ; it was necessary that 
the Scotch bishop should have none. Leighton was a 
truly good man ; and, after giving the office a fair trial, he 
found himself entirely unfitted for it. 

It may be remarked, however, that though the Reformed 
Church of Scotland has always been opposed to bishops in 
the king's sense of the term, she has ever loved and cher- 
ished them in the true apostolical sense; and that the 
republican level on which she has placed her ministers has 
proved the most direct means of securing to her the ser- 
vices of real bishops, and of guarding her against the 
intrusion of counterfeits. It has secured to her that the 
John Newtons, Thomas Scotts, and Richard Cecils of the 
corporation should not remain in inferior, uninfluential 
offices, when right reverend infidels, high in sj)iritua} 
authority, should be lending the full weight of their influ- 
ence to degrade to the merely human level the adorable 
and sole Redeemer. The bishops of our Presbyterian 
Church have been men of larger minds and greater moral 
force than their brethren, and their widely-extended 
dioceses have been the hearts and understandings of the 
people of Scotland. Knox, Craig, Melville, Bruce, Ruther- 
ford, Henderson, Witherspoon, Erskine, MoncrehT, Thom- 
son, — all these, and many others, were eminent Presby- 
terian bishops of the first rank ; and, though their claims 
may seem more than a little doubtful when tried by the 
Puseyite argument, we have no unwillingness whatever to 
subject them to the test of reason and of Scripture. 

Such is the true and rational Episcopacy of the Church 
of Scotland — an Episcopacy founded on principles which 
secure, agreeably to the spirit of the apostolical church, 
that the best and wisest men shall exercise the greatest 

1 First Book of Discipline, chap. vi. part n. • 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



58 



authority, and which the counterfeit Episcopacy of James 
and the Charleses labored so zealously to subvert. But 
there is a principle whose hostility to the Church's true 
interest is even less defensible, because more unequivocally 
secular, than that of the nominal religion by which the 
Church, in the earlier portion of her history, was so long 
and so grievously oppressed. It is not difficult to conceive 
how, through a little perverted ingenuity, the identical 
arguments which support the better Episcopacy may be 
converted into sophisms to defend the worse. Xothing 
easier than to prove the immense value of such master- 
spirits as our Knoxes and Hendersons ; and it is only 
necessary to confound the distinctions conferred on Church- 
men by kings and laws, with the distinctions created among 
them by grace and nature, in order to arrogate an equal 
importance to the hierarchy appointed by men as to the 
hierarchy instituted by God. Or the argument may be 
differently grounded. It may be asserted that a nominal 
Episcopacy in the Church is a mere recognition of its real 
Episcopacy — a mere system of sanctions extended by hu- 
man law to the natural and divinely-instituted authority 
of great and good men. And to give the assertion weight 
and plausibility in its bearing on the Scottish Church, we 
have merely to set aside our histories, and to forget that it 
was the Montgomeries, Adamsons, and Sharpes, to whose 
authority the law extended its sanction, while our untitled, 
though surely most venerable and divinely-instituted bish- 
ops were compelled to flee for their lives to the hill-side. 
But the other great expedient for secularizing the Church, — 
the patronage principle, — even sophistry itself has scarcely 
ingenuity enough to defend. It is one of those legalized 
enormities which disdain to assume even the color of good, 
and which base their claims to the respect and obedience 
of the masses whom they oppress, not on their being just 
and rational, but on their being law. Episcopacy, not- 
withstanding its grovelling and earthly spirit, was osten- 
sibly a form of religion as truly as Presbyterianism itself; 

5* 



54 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



and the controversy assumed, in consequence, a theological 
aspect. The patronage principle, on the contrary, is avow- 
edly secular. It interferes with spiritual concerns, with no 
spiritual character to assert, and intermeddles with matters 
of conscience, Avith no conscientious motives to urge. 

True it is, however, that the difference is rather appar- 
ent than real. It will be found that it is virtually the 
same modifying power in its attempts to render the Church 
a merely secular institution, subservient to merely secular 
purposes, which assumed an Episcopal form in the earlier 
portion of her history, and embodied itself into a patron- 
age principle in the latter. It will be found, too, that iden- 
tically the same class of men who were so ready to lay 
down their lives in resisting the encroachments of the one, 
have been ever the staunchest and most uncompromising 
opponents of the other; that though the assaulting prin- 
ciple from without has altered its form and mode of attack, 
it has not altered its nature; and that the resisting prin- 
ciple within, still more thoroughly consistent, has retained 
both its form and its nature too. The two conflicts, at 
once dissimilar and alike, have agitated the Church during 
two nearly equal periods of her history, — the one from 
early in the reign of J ames YI. until the Revolution, the 
other from the latter years of Anne until the present 
day. Patronage existed during the earlier period; and 
broadly was it denounced, and the w free election " princi- 
ple asserted, by even the first fathers of the Reformation ; 
but the field was occupied by questions embodying the 
same antagonist principles in a different form, and the 
abuse on the one hand, and the popular right on the other, 
were assigned subordinate places irt the controversy. It is 
perhaps not unworthy of remark, that the truly liberal 
educational scheme of the reformers shared (also in a sub- 
ordinate form) in exactly the same prosperity and the same 
reverses with the non-intrusion principle ; that the cause 
of ignorance and of patronage on the part of the court, 
of the popular right and of popular instruction on the 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



55 



part of the Church, triumphed and suffered together. 
During the earlier part of the seventeenth century, the 
educational scheme, with only its true excellence to recom- 
mend it, retained its first unauthorized and unsanctioned 
character. No sooner, however, did the Church become 
dominant, at the close of the reign of Charles I., than it 
passed into a law, — "a law," says Currie, the elegant biog- 
rapher of Burns, " which may challenge comparison with 
any act of legislation to be found in the records of history, 
whether we consider the wisdom of the ends in view, the 
simplicity of the means employed, or the provisions made 
to render these means effectual to their purpose." 1 The 
Church sank on the Restoration, and the educational law 
sank with it, together with all the other laws unsanctioned 
by the royal assent. It slept during the reigns of Charles 
and James ; but on the Revolution the Church again be- 
came dominant, and this wise and good law was again 
enacted in identically the original terms. I need hardly 
remind the reader that it had for its meet companion an 
anti-patronage law, which was established, abolished, and 
reenacted at precisely the same periods, and through ex- 
actly the same influences. 

The origin of the singularly metaphysical right of pat- 
ronage has been variously accounted for. It has been 
asserted that it may be traced simply to the circumstance 
that, in the earlier periods of our ecclesiastical history, 
churches were sometimes built and endowed by private 
individuals, who retained to themselves and their succes- 
sors the right of nominating the ecclesiastics by whom the 
duties attached to these erections were to be performed, 
and the revenues enjoyed ; and that this merely civil right 
escaped the general confiscation of church property which 
took place at the Reformation, and has come down, with a 
few interruptions, to our own times. It will be found, how- 
ever, that this, though a sufficiently clear, is but a partial 
statement of the case. In whom, I ask, were the rights of 

l Dr. Currie's Prefatory Kemarks, Life of Burns. 



56 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



patronage vested in 1560, on the first documentary recog- 
nition of Protestantism by the Lords of the Congregation ? 

— Not, certainly, in the Argyles, Glencairns, Lindsays, 
Boyds, Hays, Lochinvars, Marshals, Drumlanrigs, of Scot- 
tish story. I find the names of these noblemen, with those 
of many others, attached to the First Book of Discipline, 
in which the free election principle is so broadly and un- 
compromisingly laid down. I find, too, that in pledging 
themselves to support the various important principles 
which the book embodies, as altogether " good and con- 
form to God's word," they could stipulate as a condition 
that the Churchmen of the exploded faith should be per- 
mitted to enjoy their benefices during the course of their 
lives. But there is no stipulation regarding the "free elec- 
tion" principle; no mention made of a right vested in 
either themselves or others, which it threatened to subvert ; 
in short, nothing whatever to show that they deemed the 
claims of patronage more Protestant in principle, or less 
entirely abrogated by the triumph of the " antient opin- 
ions," than even the worship of saints and images, or the 
doctrine of transubstantiation itself. The Reformation 
interposed at this period a wide gulf between the abuses 
of the old system and the usages of the new, and not a 
single right of patronage had as yet strided across the 
chasm. 

The revival of these rights was evidently an after- 
thought, — one of the many expedients of the time for 
secularizing the Church. We read its true character in 
that of the party in whom it originated, — in the appoint- 
ment of the tulchan bishops, in the violence of Morton 
and his associates in 1571, in the Black Acts of 1584, 

— in short, in the entire history of James, and in that of 
his son. Nor can we well conceive a greater contrast than 
that which existed between the spirit in which these rights 
of patronage were asserted by the court party on the one 
side, and the modified and well-restricted sense in which 
they were recognized by the Church on the other. The 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



57 



highest civil authority was of course that of the king; nor 
was his power yet compressed within its true limits by the 
just rights of the people ; for, though a few enlightened 
minds of the Knox and Buchanan calibre could mark ont the 
separating boundary with a skill and precision not surpassed 
in any after period, there existed no tidal influences of opin- 
ion powerful enough to raise and propel the masses to the 
proper line. Liberty had almost all its battles yet to fight, 
and prerogative almost all its defeats yet to sustain. The 
king was the first magistrate of the country ; but he was 
also a great deal more ; and the national property held by 
him for the public good was too often confounded with a 
thing so entirely different as the personal property held by 
him for his own benefit. But though the Church shared, in 
some degree, in this confusion of ideas, her high principles 
assisted materially in clearing her views ; and she could 
assert in her Book of Discipline that not even by the king 
himself should ministers be obtruded on congregations 
contrary to the will of the people. In his connection with 
her patrimony, however, — a connection which, now that 
such matters are better understood, resolves itself into 
merely the care of the magistracy extended to public prop- 
erty employed for the public advantage, — she recognized 
his rights of patronage. Nor is it at all difficult to conceive 
how, in her view of the matter, these rights, and even a 
free-election principle, should be perfectly compatible with 
each other. She had but one code of laws and one rule 
of duty for all men, with no peculiar license for kings ; and, 
deeming the monarch as certainly an accountable creature 
as any of his subjects, and recognizing but one way in 
which his privileges could be employed, she held that his 
right of patronage was a sacred trust, which he could only 
properly exercise by extending to the people, as the occa- 
sion offered, a liberty of choice ; and that the intrusion 
upon them of an unpopular minister was a gross and crim- 
inal abuse of power, which, as being contrary to justice, 
no law could sanction. There are, fortunately, Scottish 



58 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



patrons of the present day who view the privilege as vested 
in themselves in a light exactly similar to that in which 
the Church regarded it in its connection with the king, and 
who find no disagreement between its wise and conscien- 
tious exercise and a scrupulous regard to the welfare and 
wishes of the people; nor is the right a merely nominal 
one, when thus exercised by these men, if the gratitude 
and good-will of thousands, and the approval of their own 
conscience, be matters of any value. Even we of the 
present time have no other objection to patronage in such 
hands than the one which a Roman of the empire might 
have urged against the despotism of an Antonine or an 
Aurelian ; — it is merely the irresponsible power, and the 
Neros and Domitians, that we dread. 

But James VI., the true son of Mary and of Darnley, 
and, if we except his ancestor, James III., the most con- 
temptible of all our Scottish kings, was a patron of a very 
different stamp from either Sir George Sinclair or the 
Marquis of Bute. At once timid and unscrupulous, grasp- 
ing and profuse, facile and ungenerous, childishly attached 
to a few, though indifferent to the good of the many, ever 
eager to extend his power beyond the just limits, and yet 
ever subject to some petty tyranny of his own creating, 
with almost vanity and folly enough to neutralize his cun- 
ning, and nearly weakness enough to balance his •wicked- 
ness, — there was scarce an opportunity of good or of 
advantage which he did not misimprove, scarce a privilege 
which he did not abuse, scarce a duty in which he did not 
fail. Nay, such was the nature of the man, that he was 
hardly more faithful to his own selfish aims than to the 
just rights of his subjects. Robertson shows us with how 
careless a hand he j^ortioned out, among his flatterers and 
favorites, the church lands annexed by Parliament to the 
Crown, and which, if retained, would have so mightily 
strengthened the power he was so anxious to establish. 
And Calderwood relates that he dealt after exactly the 
same manner with the rights of patronage, which he had 



THE WHIGGISM OE THE OLD SCHOOL. 59 



for the purpose created, contrary to law, when they had 
ceased to exist — scattering them as thoughtlessly and pro- 
fusely among his courtiers and minions as he could have 
done the counters which he used in play, when the game 
was over. 1 The Church seriously remonstrated against an 
abuse of "the kingly power so weak in itself, and so preg- 
nant with evil, and urged, somewhat in the spirit of the 
last General Assembly, that gifts of such ill omen should 
be instantly recalled, and that commissioners and presby- 
teries should not be " processed and horned" for not giv- 
ing admission to "persons presented by the new patrons." 
But supplications and remonstrances with only justice and 
reason to recommend them proved of little avail ; and the 
king's gifts, in all their portentous absurdity, were con- 
firmed, not recalled. Certainly the origin of patronage in 
the Reformed Church of Scotland had not been such as to 
entitle it to much reverence. It has been truly remarked, 
that the cause of justice and of truth stands in need of no 
pedigree to ennoble it; but the reverse is not equally true; 
and it is well to know of an antagonist cause, that the 
meanness of its descent corresponds with the flagitiousness 
of its principles. It does not in any degree tend to increase 
our respect for the rights of patronage — rights so con- 
tinually associated with wrong — to find that they should 
have originated in the grasping rapacity of a selfish aris- 
tocracy, who, to accomplish their sordid purposes of per- 
sonal or family aggrandizement, could have sacrificed the 
spiritual welfare of a whole country, in the mistaken no- 
tions of a comparatively uninformed age, only partially 
won from slavery and barbarism, and in the criminal 
usurpation and weak profusion of a silly and unprincipled 
king. 

To the reenactment of patronage by the last Parliament 
of Anne it is unnecessary to allude. All the more honor- 

1 Calderwood, p. 227. (Sir George M'Kenzie, Obserr. Act 1692, c. 121, observes: 
"There can be nothing so unjust and illegal as these patronages were.") 



60 



THE WHIGGISM OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 



able friends of the principle which the law embodies freely 
admit that the measure, whatever it was in itself, was dis- 
gracefully carried, and that the accomplishment of its main 
object would have proved the ruin of the country. There 
is no one reckless or unprincipled enough to justify it in 
its first character as a conspiracy. Brougham himself does 
no more than shut his eyes on the history of the time, and 
observe a profound silence regarding the facts. The apolo- 
gists of the law ground their defence on an entirely differ- 
ent basis. They remark, with Paley, that there are meas- 
ures which have presented, on their first establisment, an 
apparently doubtful or indifferent character, which are 
found eventually to involve principles little dreamed of by 
either their friends or their enemies, and to serve other 
and more important purposes than those for which they 
were originally designed, and that the law of patronage is 
one of these. They are ingenuous enough, in most in- 
stances, to confess, with the honorable Sir Walter, that the 
law was badly conceived and ill-intended ; they only assert 
that it has wrought well. Now, most broadly and* point- 
edly do we deny the fact. It has not wrought well. It 
has wrought ill — decidedly, unequivocally, emphatically 
ill. It has ever breathed in its influences the spirit of its 
first enactment ; its character has ever corresponded with 
the baseness of its origin ; it has done more to unchristian- 
ize the people of Scotland than all the learned and in- 
genious infidelity of the eighteenth century; it has inflicted 
a severer injury on the Church than all the long-protracted 
and bloody persecutions of the seventeenth. 

The subject is one of great multiplicity; but nothing 
can well be simpler or more obvious than the principles 
which it involves ; and the light of reason and of history 
exhibit it in exactly the same point of view. No one 
can assert, without either a strange abuse of words or a 
scarcely conceivable confusion of ideas, that a law works 
for the benefit of any institution, if it be the direct and 
palpable tendency of that law to overturn and destroy it. 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 61 



And it is not less obvious, that if the institution be good, 
and positively useful, the law which tends to its overthrow 
must be bad, and positively mischievous. It is a poison 
introduced into the system, a "law which kills." Now, 
it is an undisputed fact, that little more than a century 
has passed since a Commission of the General Assembly 
"loosened the pastoral relation" of four of our worthiest 
clergymen "to their respective charges," and declared 
them to be "no longer ministers of the Church ;" and this 
for no other crime than that of daring openly to avow the 
same detestation of the intrusive principle which, during 
the two preceding centuries, all the better Presbyterians 
of the country had been openly avowing before them. It 
is not less a fact, that in the Edinburgh Almanac for the 
present year there are no fewer than twelve closely-printed 
* pages of names of Scottish clergymen located within the 
country, each of these holding by the same catechism and 
confession of faith with the Church itself; each and all of 
them deriving their distinctive designation from the four 
ejected ministers, and their separate existence, either di- 
rectly or indirectly, from the abuse of patronage ; each 
furnished w T ith an attached congregation, who, but for the 
tyranny of the deprecated law, would have been at this 
moment within the pale of the Establishment, constituting 
its strength ; and that, in the proportion of about seven- 
eighths to the entire amount, this numerous and influential 
body, both ministers and people, are zealously laboring to 
overturn this very Establishment, and want only a little 
more of that power which has been accumulating among 
them in so formidable a ratio during the last fifty years, fully 
to accomplish their purpose. Nay, that they do not already 
possess this power, and that the Church is not already 
overthrown, is owing solely to the fact that the patrons of 
Scotland have been, in many instances, a great deal less 
wicked than the law of patronage, and have waived the 
exclusive rights which it conferred upon them in favor of 
the people. 

6 



62 



THE WHIGGrISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



And not only can it be shown that the law of patronage 
has a direct tendency to destroy the Church, but that it 
has also a tendency equally direct to render it worthy of 
being destroyed. The entire people of Scotland are judges 
in this matter; there is no need of framing arguments 
to convince them; it is only necessary to refer to well- 
known facts. When, and through what influence, I ask, 
was it that the Church of Scotland, long the most popular 
and influential of all establishments, ceased to so great an 
extent to impress its own character on that of the country, 
and, from being a guide and leader of the people, sunk in 
so marked a degree into a follower and dependent on the 
government and the aristocracy ? When and through 
what influence was it that the children learned to look 
with coldness and suspicion on an order of men to whom 
their fathers had turned in every time of trouble for as- 
sistance and counsel, — whose sayings they delighted to 
treasure up, — the stories of whose lives and sufferings 
constituted their choicest literature, — whose very names 
they employed as watchwords whenever there was a right 
to be asserted or a wrong to be redressed, — whom they 
unhesitatingly followed to the hillside and the battle-field, 
into exile and captivity, to tortures and to death? When 
and through what influence was it that the old evangelical 
party sunk into a feeble and persecuted minority, — that 
party who subscribed the confession of our faith, believ- 
ing it in their hearts, — who, fearing the curse denounced 
by John, delivered the whole truth of God, taking nothing 
therefrom, and adding nothing thereto, — who first asserted 
for themselves and their countrymen the high rights of the 
species, and dared to think and to act with the freedom of 
men ennobled by "the liberty with which Christ maketh 
his people free," — who so zealously strove, amid the dark- 
ness of ignorance and superstition, to extend to even the 
meanest vassal the blessings of religion and the light of 
learning, and who were ever so ready in the good cause 
to give their temporalities to the winds, and to hold their 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 63 



lives as nothing ? When and through what influence was 
it that more than one-half the clergy of our Church, pow- 
erless for every good purpose, were made to stand on 
exactly the same ground which had been occupied by the 
curates and bishops of half a century before, and through 
which the pike and the musket came to be employed, as 
in the worst days of Charles II., to secure the settlement 
of ministers misnamed Presbyterian? Through what in- 
fluence was it that, the more secular-minded the clergy- 
man, the more certain was he of retaining his office in the 
Church, and through which men such as Fisher and the 
Erskines came to be regarded as the very pests and trai- 
tors of the institution, and the godly and inoffensive Gilles- 
pie — whose sole crime it was that he would neither offend 
against his own sense of duty nor yet outrage the con- 
science of others — came to be contemptuously thrust 
out? Through what influence was it that the clerical 
farmers and corn-factors of forty years ago were brought 
into the Church, — the men who were so ready, in what 
has been termed the natural course of society, to quit the 
'pastoral for the agricultural life, and who, in years of 
scarcity, when the price of grain rose beyond all precedent, 
were either thriving on the miseries of the people, and 
accumulating to themselves, in the least popular of all 
characters, the bitter contempt and unmingled detestation 
of a whole country, 1 or, as the unhonored martyrs of un- 
lucky speculation, were studying in jails, or under hiding, 
the restrictions and technicalities of the bankrupt statutes ? 
Who of all the men of our country has not marked the dif- 
ference which obtains between the faithful minister of Jesus 
Christ, alike equal in rank to the highest and to the lowest 
who have souls to be lost or saved, — between the zealous 
preacher of the truth, appointed by God himself to wres- 
tle with men for their souls, and the mere clerical, half- 

1 It is a fact which stands in need of no comment, that the person in the north 
of Scotland who first raised the price of oatmeal to three pounds per boll was a 
minister of the Established Church. 



64 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



fashionable gentleman of " limited means," so little re- 
spected by the people, and so coldly regarded by the 
aristocracy, — the mere reader of sermons for apiece of 
bread, whose sole "vocation" consists in the perhaps pur- 
chased favor of some unprincipled courtier or ungodly 
patron? Truly the people of Scotland must forget a 
great deal before they can learn to love patronage even a 
very little ; and the man must be wofully ignorant of both 
the facts of the question and the national character, or 
strangely confident in his own powers of persuasion, who 
hopes to convince us, in the face of ten thousand hostile 
recollections, that the secularizing, soul-destroying law of 
the infidel Bolingbroke has wrought well. 

I heard sermon only a few weeks ago in the church of a 
country parish in the north of Scotland, where almost the 
entire people are separated from the clergyman. I had 
previously seen much of the evils of patronage. In the 
prosecution of a humble but honest calling, of which I am 
not mean enough to be ashamed, I had travelled over a 
considerable part of Scotland. I had been located for 
months together, at one period of my life, among the par- 
ishes of its southern districts, at another in those of the 
north ; I had seen both the Highlands and the Low 
country; and if the powers of observation were not want- 
ing, the opportunities were certainly very great. But the 
almost entire desertion of a pastor by his people was a 
thing I had not yet witnessed, and I was desirous to see 
and judge for myself. There are associations of a high 
and peculiar character connected with this northern parish. 
For more than a thousand years it has formed part of the 
patrimony of a truly noble family, celebrated by Philip 
Doddridge for its great moral worth, and by Sir Walter 
Seott for its high military genius, and through whose in- 
fluence the light of the Reformation had been introduced 
into this remote corner, at a period when all the neighbor- 
ing districts were enveloped in the original darkness. In 
a later age it had been honored by the fines and proscrip- 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 65 

tions of Charles II. ; and its minister — one of those men 
of Gocl whose names still live in the memory of the coun- 
try, and whose biography occupies no small space in the 
recorded history of her " worthies " — had rendered him- 
self so obnoxious to the tyranny and irreligion of the 
time, that he was ejected from his charge more than a 
year before any of the other non-conforming clergymen 
of the Church. I approached the parish from the east. 
The day was warm and pleasant; the scenery through 
which I passed, some of the finest in Scotland. The 
mountains rose on the right in huge Titanic masses, that 
seemed to soften their purple and* blue in the clear sun- 
shine to the delicate tone of the deep sky beyond, and I 
could see the yet unwasted snows of summer glittering in 
little detached masses along their summits; the hills of 
the middle region were feathered with wood ; a forest of 
mingled oaks and larches, which still blended the tender 
softness of spring with the full foliage of summer, swept 
4own to the path ; the wide undulating plain below was 
laid out into fields, mottled with cottages, and waving with 
the yet unshot corn ; and a noble arm of the sea winded 
along the lower edge for nearly twenty miles, losing itself 
to the west among blue hills and jutting headlands, and 
opening in the east to the main ocean through a magnifi- 
cent gateway of rock. But the little groups which I en- 
countered at every turning of the path, as they journeyed, 
with all the sober, well-marked decency of a Scottish Sab- 
bath morning, towards the church of a neighboring parish, 
interested me more than even the scenery. The clan 
which inhabited this part of the country had borne a 
well-marked character in Scottish story. Buchanan has 
described it as one of the most fearless and warlike in the 
north. It served under the Bruce at Bannockburn ; it was 
the ;first to rise in arms to protect Queen Mary, on her visit 
to Inverness, from the intended violence of Huntly ; it- 
fought the battles of Protestantism in Germany under 

6* 



66 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



Gustavus Adolphus; 1 it covered the retreat of the English 
at Fontenoy, and presented an unbroken front to the 
enemy after all the other allied troops had quitted the 
field. And it was the descendants of these very men who 
were now passing me on the road. The rugged, robust 
form, half bone, half muscle; the springy firmness of the 
tread; the grave, manly countenance, — all gave indica- 
tion that the original characteristics survived in their full 
strength ; and it was a strength that inspired confidence, 
not fear. There were gray-haired, patriarchal-looking men 
among the groups, whose very air seemed impressed by a 
sense of the duties of the day ; nor was there aught that 
did not agree with the object of the journey in the appear- 
ance of even the youngest and least thoughtful. 

As I proceeded, I came up with a few people who were 
travelling in a contrary direction. A Secession meeting- 
house has lately sprung up in the parish, and these formed 
part of the congregation. A path nearly obscured by grass 
and weeds leads from the main road to the parish churcji. 
It was with difficulty I could trace it, and there were none 
to direct me, for I was now walking alone. The parish 
burying-ground, thickly sprinkled with graves and tomb- 
stones, surrounds the church. It is a quiet, solitary spot of 
great beauty, lying beside the sea-shore ; and as service 
had not yet commenced, I whiled away half an hour in 
sauntering among the stones, and deciphering the inscrip- 
tions. I could trace in the rude monuments of this retired 
little spot a brief but impressive history of the district. 
The older tablets, gray and shaggy with the mosses and 
lichens of three centuries, bear, in their uncouth semblan- 
ces of the unwieldy battle-axe and double-handed sword 
of ancient warfare, the meet and appropriate symbols of 
the earlier time. But the more modern testify to the 

1 It is an interesting fact, and illustrates happily the high respect with which 
the clansmen must have regarded their general, that, even in the present day, 
the name Gustavus is scarcely more common in Sweden itself than in this part 
of the country. 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. G7 



introduction of a humanizing influence. They speak of a 
life after death in the " holy texts " described by the poet, 
or certify, in a quiet humility of style which almost vouches 
for their truth, that the sleepers below were "honest men, 
of blameless character, and who feared God." There is 
one tombstone, however, more remarkable than all the 
others. It lies beside the church door, and testifies, in 
an antique inscription, that it covers the remains of 

the " GREAT.MAN.OF.GOD.AND.FAITHFYL.MINISTER.OF.IESVS 

christ," who had endured persecution for the truth in the 
dark days of Charles and his brother. He had outlived 
the tyranny of the Stuarts, and, though worn by years and 
sufferings, had returned to his parish on the Revolution, to 
end his course as it had begun. He saw, ere his death, the 
law of patronage abolished, and the popular right virtually 
secured ; and fearing lest his people might be led to abuse 
the important privilege conferred on them, and calculating 
aright on the abiding influence of his own character anions 

ZD ZD 

them, he gave charge on his death-bed to dig his grave in 
the threshold of the church, that they might regard him as 
a sentinel placed at the door, and that his tombstone might 
speak to them as they passed out and in. The inscription, 
which, after the lapse of nearly a century and a half, is 
still perfectly legible, concludes with the following remark- 
able works : — " This.stone.shall.bear.witness.a gainst. 

THE.PARISHIONERS.OF IF. THE Y.P.RING.ANE. UNGODLY. 

3iinister.in.here." Could the imagination of a poet have 
originated a more striking conception in connection with 
a church deserted by all its better people, and whose min- 
ister fattens on his hire, useless and contented ? 

1 entered the church, for the clergyman had just gone in. 
There were from eight to ten persons scattered over the 
pews below, and seven in the galleries above ; and these, 
as there. were no more " John Clerks " and "Michael Tods nl 

l " Peter Clark and Michael Tod were the only individuals who, in a popula- 
tion of three thousand souls, attached their signatures to the call of the obnox- 
ious presentee, Mr. Young, in the famous Auchterarder case." — Note appended 
to "My Schools and Schoolmasters." 



68 



THE WHIGGISM OE THE OLD SCHOOL. 



in the parish, composed the entire congregation. I wrap- 
ped myself up in my plaid and sat down, and the service 
went on in the usual course ; but it sounded in my ears 
like a miserable mockery. The precentor sung almost 
alone ; and, ere the clergyman had reached the middle of 
his discourse, which he read in an unimpassioned, monoto- 
nous tone, nearly one half his skeleton congregation had 
fallen asleep; and the drowsy, listless expression of the 
others showed that, for every good purpose, they might 
have been asleep too. And Sabbath after Sabbath has 
this unfortunate man gone the same tiresome round, and 
with exactly the same effects, for the last twenty-three 
years, at no time regarded by the better clergymen of the 
district as really their brother, on no occasion recognized 
by the parish as virtually its minister, with a dreary vacancy 
and a few indifferent hearts inside his church, and the stone 
of the Covenanter at the door! Against whom does the 
inscription testify? — for the people have escaped. Against 
the patron, the intruder, and the law of Bolingbroke, — 
the Dr. Robertsons of the last age, and the Dr. Cooks of 
the present. It is well to learn from this hapless parish 
the exact sense in which, in a different state of matters, the 
Rev. Mr. Young would have been constituted minister of 
Auchterarder. It is well, too, to learn, that there may be 
vacancies in the Church where no blank appears in the 
Almanac. 

It is scarce necessary to remark, that the present position 
of the Church is a position which she has often occupied, 
or that the agitated question is one which she has agitated 
a thousand times before. There is comfort in the fact that 
we need only refer to her history, to show that all her bet- 
ter names have been invariably on the one side ; and that 
the highest praise to which her opponents can pretend is 
that some of them have been fortunate enough to have 
attained to a negative character, and that some of them 
have had the merit of being equivocal. There is comfort, 
too, in the reflection that what is morally wrong cannot be 



THE WHIGOISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



69 



logically right ; and that not only the worthier men, but 
also the sounder arguments, are to be found on the better 
side. It is indeed no easy matter to prove that our clergy- 
men should not receive the people's money for the people's 
good, unless they first recognize an uncontrollable right 
of misapplication in the patron; that Bolingbroke's Act 
and the Eeform Bill should alike remain the law of the 
land, to blend more than the civil liberty of the freest 
states of antiquity with well-nigh the ghostly despotism 
of Turkey or of Rome ; or that men, through a sense of 
the high duty which they owe to God, should obey an 
unjust law, through which God's own laws are to be nulli- 
fied, his gospel repressed, and the consciences of his people 
wronged and offended. And yet such are the difficulties 
of at least our more extreme opposers. The Lord Presi- 
dent of the Court of Session is unquestionably an able and 
respectable lawyer; but it is an over-task for even the 
Lord President himself to be correct and rational when in 
the wrong; and his address in the Lethendy case is per- 
haps not less valuable as an illustration of the kind of facts 
and arguments of which our opponents can alone avail 
themselves, than even his lordship's ablest and most 
impressive addresses in their direct and proper character. 

TVe are shown by Locke, in his wonderful Essay, that 
"confusions making it a difficulty to separate two things 
that should be separated, concern always two ideas, and 
those most which most approach one another." His lord- 
ship, however, confounds ideas the most distinct — tilings 
which do not belong to even the same category. He mis- 
takes a duty enjoined for a power conferred; and finds a 
mystery, which he confesses himself unable to comprehend, 
in the absurdity into which the mistake necessarily leads. 
The article in our Confession quoted by his lordship in- 
structs the civil magistrate "to take order that unity and 
peace be preserved in the Church; that the truth of God 
be kept pure and entire; that blasphemies and heresies be 
suppressed j corruptions and abuses in worship and disci- 



70 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE -OLD SCHOOL. 



pline prevented or reformed ; " and it empowers Mm, the 
better to fulfil the enjoined duty, to call synods, regarding 
which he is instructed " to provide that whatever is trans- 
acted in them he according to the mind of God." Now, 
what, I ask, can well be simpler than this, especially the 
concluding portion of the passage, which seems intended 
to guard against the very possibility of misconception, and 
throws so clear a lio-ht on what goes before ? The mind 
of God is the pure and perfect code embedied in God's 
word, — the sublime doctrines which God reveals, the 
high duties which he enjoins, the pure morality which 
he inculcates; and the magistrate, as the responsible sub- 
ject of this absolute and immutable code, is commanded to 
take order that he not only conform to it himself, but that 
the Church conform to it too. Strange, however, as it may 
seem, this explanatory and restricting clause — this clause 
which lowers the delegated trust into a strictly defined 
duty — his lordship confesses himself totally unable to 
understand. 1 He had explored the passage with so engross- 
ing and definite a conception of the meaning he had ex- 
pected to find in it, as to have ho eyes for the meaning 
which it actually conveys. The determining and defining 
clause, which asserts the supremacy of the Divine law, 
appeared to him somehow as merely a splendid obscurity, 
which sanctioned the exercise of a great, though mysterious 
and undefinable, power. I doubt not that the ministers at 
the bar understood the passage a little better, and accepted 

i " What is the precise meaning of that passage I am sure I don't know, or 
what is the jurisdiction it gives to the civil magistrate: but it must allude to 
something which is not temporal. The mind of God is a spiritual concern, and 
they [magistrates] are to take care that the things transacted in synods be ac- 
cording to the mind of God. Surely this does not exclude the civil magistrate 
from interfering in ecclesiastical concerns. If words be capable of conveying a 
meaning, it certainly gives to the civil authority more power than they have ever 
exercised, or than, I believe, it was ever meant they should exercise; but it 
must allude to more than mere temporal concerns. In short, I hope that, on 
sober reflection, the Church will see that they cannot remain in the position of 
an Established Church, and yet resist the law which has made them an Estab' 
lMied Church."— Lord President's Address, Report, Scot. Guard., 18th June x 
1839. 



THE WIIIGGISM OE THE OLD SCHOOL, 



71 



it as a sign that they were not standing on unsafe or dis- 
honorable ground. It proved perfectly impracticable on 
this occasion for every purpose of the court. It passed no 
censure on the minister of Lethendy ; denounced no threat 
against the Presbytery of Dunk eld; and if it empowers 
Lords of Session and their presidents to enter our church 
courts, it gives them at least no encouragement to vote on 
the secular side. The passage was introduced into our 
Confession, in its present form, rather more than a hun- 
dred and ninety years ago ; and there has it remained ever 
since, as unchanged to suit the profligacy' of Charles II., or 
the prostitution and subserviency of his courts of law, as 
when the good President Forbes employed his whole .Sab- 
baths in studying the " mind of God," and the rest of the 
week in advancing the weal of his country, and in the con- 
scientious discharge of the high duties of his office. It 
extended to the magistracy exactly the same power which 
it does now, and breathed exactly the same spirit, when 
Middleton introduced the unhappy act which overturned 
Presbyterianism in Scotland, — when the apostate Lauder- 
dale renounced the Covenant, to become the remorseless 
persecutor of his brethren, — when the criminals of our 
courts were the martyrs of our Church, — when the heroic 
Mackail stood before the Lords of Council with his leg 
fixed in the boot, and the executioner struck the wedge 
till the bone was splintered, and the blood and marrow 
spurted in their faces. 

Some of his lordship's other mistakes and misconceptions 
are scarcely less striking than the one just exposed. Error 
and misstatement creep into his very facts, — error, too, of 
so important a nature as entirely to alter their illustrative 
scope and character. It is unnecessary to allude a second 
time to his lordship's Episcopal argument, so well backed 
by Greek, and so ill supported by history. In his allusion 
to the eminent Father of the Secession, he is still more 
palpably unfortunate. He tells our better clergymen that 
they have but one alternative in the matter; that an 



72 



THE WHIGGISM OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 



implicit submission to the law of patronage is one of the 
express conditions on which they receive the support of 
the state; find that they must either unresistingly subject 
themselves to this conditional law, or, like the good Eben- 
ezer Erskine, throw up their livings, and quit the Establish- 
ment: for this excellent and eminent man, finding, as his 
lordship states the case, that he could neither remain in 
the Establishment without submitting to the law, nor yet 
submit to the law without offending against his conscience, 
judiciously and honestly settled the point by withdrawing 
from the Church and founding the Secession. What ob- 
scure and nameless historian could have so entirely misled 
his lordship? The statement is totally untrue. Erskine 
did not withdraw from the Establishment : he was thrust 
out, and thrust out for this, — that he broadly and point- 
edly condemned the Church for doing what the court now 
requires of it to do, and for not doing what, in direct op- 
position to the court, it has now done. He took his stand, 
with his three brethren, on the broad constitutional ground 
which had been occupied by all the better men of the 
Church from the Reformation downwards; and, outnum- 
bered and overborne in an inferior ecclesiastical court, he 
appealed to the highest. And there, too, he was outnum- 
bered and overborne ; but, strong in the goodness of his 
cause and the approval of his conscience, he would neither 
recognize its censures as just, nor succumb to its authority. 
And the court, by a commission of its members, proceeded 
to cast him out as a disturber of its peace. It " loosened 
his pastoral relation to his charge," declared his "parish 
vacant," pronounced him " no longer a minister of the 
Church of Scotland," and prohibited all the acknowledged 
ministers of the Church from "employing him in any min- 
isterial function." Against this unjust sentence Erskine 
protested and appealed; and the document is recorded, 
not in the journals of the assembly, but in the heart and 
mind of the country. He "protested that his pastoral 
relation to his people should still be held firm and valid ; " 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



73 



that he should " still hold communion with all and every- 
one who adhered to the jDrinciples of the true Presbyterian 
Church of Scotland ; " that it should " still be held lawful 
for him to exercise the keys of doctrine, discipline, and 
government, according to the word of God, the Confes- 
sion of Faith, and the constitution" of this, the "Cove- 
nanted Church," by which he so tenaciously held ; and 
finally, in the hope of a better spirit in the future, he 
" appealed to the first free, faithful, and reforming General 
Assembly of the Church of Scotland y" 1 nor are there 
many of our worthier ministers who do not recognize the 
full justice of the appeal. Such are the facts of the case, 
as sanctioned by authentic history, in opposition to those 
adduced by his lordship. But in passing from the illustra- 
tion to the principle illustrated, it cannot be improper to 
ask, what sort of estimate has this shrewd and able magis- 
trate formed of the strength and importance of the party 
which he so coolly recommends either to submit to the 
law of patronage, or to retire from the Church ? Has he 
not mistaken the staff, on this occasion, for the main army, 
— the representatives of the million for the million itself? 
Or is it really the tens and hundreds of thousands — the 
preponderating majority and strength of the country, with 
all their hereditary hatred and acquired dislike of the 
iniquitous and deprecated law — to whom he submits the 
alternative ? Retire from the Church ! The Church can- 
not exist without us. We are the thews and sinews, the 
blood and nerves, of the Church. Our support is essen- 
tially necessary to secure their temporalities to even the 
clergymen who value us least ; and the secession of our 
party would be the inevitable ruin of our opponents. 

The misfortune of the Lord President's address consisted 
simply in this, -r- it was a great deal too clear. His lord- 
ship had to defend what was in itself radically wrong; 

i For an impartial and well-written account of the origin of the Secession, see 
" Chambers's Lives of Eminent Scotsmen," " Life of Erskine," vol. ii. p. 230, etc 



7 



74 THE WHIGGISM OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 

and, instead of entrenching himself behind acts of Par* 
liament happy in their ambiguities, and precedents of 
the Court which may in some instances be but recorded 
mistakes, he came imprudently out into the open field of 
reason and of Scripture. Arguments drawn from the mere 
law of the case could have been combated by few ; but in 
drawing them from the Bible — a book at once the most 
decided on questions of morals, and the most extensively 
known — and from reason, the common gift and distinguish- 
ing characteristic of the species, he addressed himself to 
the understandings of the entire community. And hence, 
obviously enough, the people have been enabled to change 
places with his lordship. It is alike contrary to the whole 
scope of reason and of Scripture that obedience be ren- 
dered to an unjust law; nor can there be anything more 
exquisitely absurd than to confound such an obedience with 
the mere recognition of the power and authority of the 
magistrate. " Our Saviour," says his lordship, " pleaded 
no exemption from the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim." 
True ; but our Saviour never obeyed an unjust law. " Paul 
pleaded before Felix," Festus, " and Agrippa, and," as the 
edicts against the Christians were not yet framed, "he 
appealed to Csesar." Undisputably ; but Paul did not obey 
an unjust law. Nor are we left to mere inference in the 
matter. Peter and John, when brought before a council of 
rulers and Sadducee elders, assigned good and sufficient 
reasons why they should not submit themselves to the will 
or authority of men, if opposed to that of God ; and the 
argument still survives to urge on our consciences, that 
we yield not obedience to an unjust law. Nay, it is only 
necessary, in deciding the question, to inquire why the 
churches have been persecuted and the martyrs slain. His 
lordship's law does not lie so much within reach as his lord- 
ships facts and arguments. It is exceedingly natural, how- 
ever, to judge of it from the company which it keeps, and 
to bear in mind that very eminent lawyers have arrived at 
very opposite conclusions on the point, and entertain very 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 75 



different opinions. The independence of the Church seems 
as decidedly recognized by statute as the rights of the pa- 
tron ; and, besides, are we not assured " that the law and 
the opinion of the judge are not always convertible terms, 
or one and the same thing, since it sometimes may happen 
that the judge may mistake the law"? Now, this must 
surely be good sense, for it is according to reason and 
experience; and it must necessarily be good law, for it 
occurs in Blackstone. 

It is fully admitted, however, that the decision of our 
courts has practically determined the law, and that the 
Church is at this moment as entirely at the mercy of the 
patron as if her liberties had never been asserted nor her 
independence recognized. The Court of Session has means 
at command, far more convincing than argument, to com- 
pel the admission; and the readiness to employ these is 
fully equal to the ability. We have already seen one of 
the Presbyteries of our Church honored by a public rebuke, 
and fines and imprisonment hang over another. But the 
duty of our ministers is not the less clear. They owe it 
to themselves and to their people, to their country and to 
their God, that they neither obey this iniquitous law, nor 
yet quit the Establishment. Either alternative involves 
the ruin of the Church of Scotland ; and who is there that 
has studied our country's history in the true spirit, or has 
acquainted himself with the temper of the present time, 
and the depth and force of the national character, who can 
believe that the Church of Scotland is destined to fall 
alone? There is more at stake in the agitated question 
than either rights of patronage or the temporalities of the 
Church ; and our Earls of Kinnoull, who have wealth, and 
lands, and titles, as well as patronages, to lose, and our 
Lord Chancellors and Lord Presidents, who, like our clergy, 
derive their support from an establishment, would do well 
to beware that in this season of tempests and tornadoes 
they unsettle not the ballast of the state. There are ele- 
ments of tremendous power slumbering, and but partially 



76 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



slumbering, among the masses ; and woe to the people — 
a double woe to the aristocracy of the land — if these 
once awaken in the fierce and untamable fury of their 
nature, to bid defiance to every law, and to trample on 
every privilege. God, to avert the calamity, and in his 
great and wonted care for our country, is awakening the 
old spirit of the Church, — that free and noble spirit which, 
alike opposed to despotism in the ruler and to license in 
the people, can brook neither the grinding tyranny of the 
few, nor yet the fiercer and more savage intolerance of the 
many ; and if his design of mercy be thwarted through a 
selfish and short-sighted policy, the judgment shall assur- 
edly fall heaviest on the classes which offend most. In 
the event of a popular convulsion, all must necessarily 
suffer, and suffer to no good end. It is an immutable law 
of Deity that the blessings of freedom can be enjoyed by 
only wise and virtuous men, and that the uncultured and 
the vicious, in their vain attempts to secure to themselves 
an ideal liberty, for which they are unfitted, shall struggle 
fruitlessly in a miserable and delusive cycle of crime and 
sorrow, that ever returns into itself. All would necessa- 
rily suffer. But it could not be by the common people that 
the infliction would be felt most severely ; nor, were the 
hour already come, would the writer of these pages ex- 
change his humble lot, with its various adjuncts, necessary 
or peculiar, for perhaps even the highest. He has but lit* 
tie to lose or to provoke envy ; he has been accustomed to 
hardship and fatigue ; he is in the full vigor of manhood ; 
he could fight as a common soldier in the ranks ; and, if 
he survived the struggle, he might find himself occupying 
a not lower level at its close than at its commencement. 
But the aged judges, the wealthy patrons, the delicately- 
nurtured aristocracy of Scotland, the men who have so 
much to lose, which in a popular convulsion could not fail 
to be lost, nay, even the more eloquent orators and more 
vigorous thinkers of the age, who have yet to give their 
first proof of military talent, — what fate do they augur 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 77 

to themselves? Have they secured the position which 
they are to occupy in the struggle, or ascertained the exact 
rank which they are to bear among the new aristocracy, or 
under the second Cromwell ? They think miserably amiss 
if they think the people could not find leaders without 
employing them; nor do they well if, instead of calculat- 
ing upon the formidable depth and momentum of the yet 
unbroken waters, they merely look (with, I grant, the nat- 
ural and proper contempt) on the froth and spume which 
idly bubbles on the surface, — on the shallow and futile 
talent of demagogues and declaimers, so noisy and obtru- 
sive now, but which, with the first breach in the barrier, 
would be forever engulfed in the torrent. 

It is an unchallenged truth, that it is not from reason we 
derive our highest degree of knowledge, and that welowei 
the certainty of the intuitive if we but equal it with the 
merely inferable. It is according to the nature of the 
human mind that an ascertained fact should weigh more 
than even the most ingenious argument ; and it is on this 
principle that the experience of fourteen years, spent in 
the workshed and the barrack, in almost every district of 
the country, and among almost every class of the common 
people, has had infinitely more to do in influencing my 
opinion regarding the high importance of the present 
struggle, and the imminent danger of the community, 
than all that even the more rational waiters for a merely 
intellectual millennium have urged on the one hand, or all 
that ever the abler and better Voluntaries have argued on 
the other. I have not yet discovered the elements of the 
coming happiness among the immense masses broken loose 
from religion. And though I can believe, with even VoK 
taire, that great prosperity has proved prejudicial to the 
Church, I cannot see that it is from prosperity the Church 
of Scotland has most to dread at present; nor have I 
found much satisfaction in balancing matters between the 
ascetics of Upper Egypt, or the more than half-infidel 

7* 



78 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



gnostics of the East, and the corrupt and tyrannical 
churchmen established by Constantine. Arguments drawn 
from so remote and misty a period have but the effect of 
rendering the discussion long and the inference uncertain. 
I have been enabled to arrive at conclusions much more 
satisfactory, to at least my own judgment, than what I 
have found among the Voluntaries themselves. I am not 
ignorant that the party has its truly excellent lay adher- 
ents — its good and faithful ministers. I have associated 
for months together with pious Voluntaries from whom I 
differed wonderfully little ; and Sabbath after Sabbath 
have I accompanied them to the meeting-house, to listen 
with, I trust, more than pleasure to some of their better 
divines ; and this in districts — and there are still too 
many such — where the gospel is not preached in the 
Establishment. It has not escaped me, however, that the 
religious men of the party are comparatively few ; that, 
save for purely political purposes, they act but feebly on 
the mass to which they are attached, and not at all for 
good on the formidable masses beyond; that, in short, 
they form merely the " silver lining of the cloud," and that 
there is enough of the smoke and stench of infidelity in its 
obscurer recesses to render a. Voluntary triumph the bane 
of the country. The conscientious motives of Dr. Wardlaw 
and his better friends operate but feebly and inefficiently 
on the thousands who, holding ostensibly by the same 
opinions, make common cause with these good but mis- 
taken men, for accomplishing the same object. I have 
met with other than pious Voluntaries — and this, too, 
in immensely greater numbers — with unsatisfied and 
restless spirits, w T ho, had not the controversy been agitated 
in its present form, would have opposed themselves, not 
to the Establishment, but to Christianity itself ; and, with 
no secular interest involved in the quarrel, save in its 
remoter consequences, I have deliberately taken my stand 
on the side of the Church of Scotland, not more influenced 



THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 79 

by a cherished recollection of her past services in the 
cause of God and humanity, or by a well-grounded confi- 
dence in those pregnant elements of good which she still 
so largely retains in her constitution, than from an assured 
conviction that the animating spirit of her opponents is 
-less an inspiration than a possession. It is not this spirit 
of modern Voluntaryism, so unlike that of the missionary, 
which is to reestablish the old character of our country, — 
to substitute a pure Christianity for the semi-barbarous 
and unreasoning infidelity of our larger towns, — to fill 
our hamlets with such men as the cotter described by the 
poet, — to sanction the testimony of some second Kirkton, 
or to justify the eulogium of some future Whitefield. It 
is easy to distinguish between a disorganizing influence 
and a reforming principle, — between the "revived opin- 
ions" of the sixteenth century and the new opinions of the 
nineteenth, — between a Scotch Parliament suppressing 
a corrupt Establishment because it was Popish, and a 
French convention annihilating a similar institution be- 
cause it was Christian. It is reformation, not change, — 
Christianity, not Voluntaryism, — that can alone save our 
country. 

There is a palpable confusion of idea in the main argu- 
ment of the party. It confounds things essentially differ- 
ent — the provided temporalities with the secular spirit. 
It regards a mere accidental connection as a necessary 
and inevitable consequence; and could the absurdity occur 
in any other than a semi-theological controversy, we might 
hear the incompetency of Cope or Burgoyne attributed to 
the parliamentary grant for the pay of the army, and the 
brutality and gross injustice of Jeffries to the establishment 
of the court over which he presided. We are content to 
trace the well-marked distinction in both the past history 
and present position of the Church of Scotland ; and are 
in no danger whatever of confounding the vantage-ground 
which her better ministers have occupied to such good 



80 THE WHIGGISM OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 



purpose, from the days of Knox until now, with that 
secular spirit which has oppressed and persecuted her in 
both the earlier and later periods of her existence, — in the 
one as an Episcopal form, in the other as a Patronage 
principle. 



LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 



It is one of the main distinctions of works produced by 
the master minds, whether in literature or the fine arts, 
that they contain a large amount of thought. There are 
books of no great bulk which it seems scarce possible to 
exhaust, and pictures which, after one had looked at them 
for hours together, appear just as fresh and new as at first 
when one comes to look at them again. The works of 
Hogarth are scarcely less remarkable for vigor and con- 
densation of thought than the works of Shakspeare ; nor 
is Sir David Wilkie a less fascinating author than Sir 
Walter Scott, or a less masterly delineator of character. 
Both these great artists — the living and the dead one, Ho- 
garth and Sir David — have shown how possible it is for 
men of genius to think vigorously upon canvas ; and that 
a clear, readable, condensed style may be attained in paint- 
ing as certainly as in writing. One never tires of their 
productions. They tell admirable stories in so admirable 
a manner, that the oftener we peruse them the better are 
we pleased ; and almost every story has its moral. There 
is, however, one of the most readable of Sir David's pic- 
tures which contains what we have been inclined to think 
a gross historical error, and belies the character of a very 
great man. His " Knox preaching before the Lords of the 
Congregation" is unquestionably a splendid composition, 
full of thought and sentiment ; but the main figure is 
defective. It represents not the powerful and persuasive 



82 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 



orator, whose unmatched eloquence led captive the great 
minds of the country, but the mere fanatical leader of an 
unthinking rabble. It reminds us of the narrow-minded 
heresiarch described by Hume and Gilbert Stuart, not 
of the vigorous-thoughted worthy apostrophized by the 
noble Milton as " Knox, the reformer of a kingdom," — "a 
great man, animated by the Spirit of God." 1 

The labors of the late Dr. M'Crie have done much to 
disabuse the public mind regarding the true character of 
Knox, moral and intellectual. Never before did an honest 
and able man turn the stream of truth through such an 

1 Mr. Carlyle, in his letter to David Laing, Esq., of the Signet Library, Edin- 
burgh, on the project of a National Exhibition of Scottish Portraits, refers to 
this work of Wilkie's in the following terms: " No picture that I ever saw by a 
man of genius can well be, in regard to all earnest purposes, a more perfect fail- 
ure. Can anything, in fact, be more entirely useless for earnest purposes, more 
MJilike what ever could have been the reality, than that gross Energumen, more 
like a boxing-butcher, whom he has set into a pulpit surrounded with draperies, 
with fat-shouldered women and play-actor men in mail, and labelled Knox?" 
With all deference to authority so high and emphasis so great, it may be per- 
mitted us to doubt whether Mr. Miller and Mr. Carlyle have done full justice to 
Wilkie's picture. It was legitimate for the artist to paint Knox as a preacher, 
and in this character his representation is certainly not unlike what the reality 
would have been. Knox in the pulpit was one of the fieriest incarnations of the 
perferviclum ingenium of his countrymen — more fiery even, were that possible, 
than Chalmers. James Melville heard him preach in 1571, the year before his 
death. Such was his weakness, that he went leaning on a staff, his neck wrapped 
in furs, and supported by Richard Ballenden. It was necessary to lift him to 
the pulpit, and on first entering it he had to lean for a time to draw breath; 
"bot," says James, in his old dialect, "er he haid done with his sermone, he 
was sa active and vigorous, that he was lyk to ding the pulpit in blads, and flie 
out of it." Wilkie had probably this passage in view when he designed his pic- 
ture, and the gestures of his Knox correspond as closely as possible to Melville's 
last words. The question whether Wilkie's choice of a moment for representing 
Knox was just and felicitous — whether it is thus we ought to realize to our- 
selves the Reformer of Scotland — resolves itself into this other, how far the 
character and work of Knox were revealed or typified in his pulpit appearances. 
Restrained by the conditions of his art, Wilkie was forced to choose between the 
Knox of the council chamber, or of the General Assembly, or of the study, and 
the Knox of the pulpit. Perhaps he ought to have painted him in some one of 
the former characters rather than in the latter. But the Reformation was much 
the work of preaching, and the painter's eye of Wilkie was correct in discerning 
how Knox preached. It may be suggested that before the Lords of the Congre- 
gation he would have subdued his fire. It is not likely. In the pulpit least of 
all would he fear or respect the face of man. The " fat-shouldered women, and 
play-actor men in mail," are of course conventional and absurd.— Ed. 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OE KNOX. 83 

Augean stable of calumny and falsehood as this admirable 
writer in elucidating the history of the Reformation. He 
accomplished such a revolution in public opinion regarding 
the characters and events of the period, as the well-chosen 
hero of his first biography accomplished in its religion. 

The reign of the dissolute and totally unprincipled 
Charles II. affected more than the mode and framework 
of English literature; it affected its spirit also. It sub- 
stituted for that indigenous school to which Shakspeare 
and Milton belong, and which, in a later time, has been 
restored by Cowper and Wordsworth, the feeble elegan- 
ces of French literature in the reign of Louis XIV. It 
substituted also for the native spirit of liberty and the zeal 
of truth, the servilities of French flattery and French false- 
hood. It was in this reign of degradation — the reign in 
which the glorious "Paradise Lost" was described by a ser- 
vile versifier as a "poem remarkable for only its length" — 
that Knox came to be represented, like the blind poet who 
so honored and cherished his memory, as a rude and 
unmannerly fanatic. He had taught kings that the divine 
right is not on the side of irresponsible power, but on the 
side of a well-regulated popular liberty. He had shown, 
with irresistible effect, that whatever God has commanded, 
men have a "divine right" to obey; and that in such mat- 
ters kings and law-makers have no right whatever to inter- 
fere. And the hereditary despots could neither overturn 
his logic nor forgive him the lesson. But they could revile 
and calumniate; and the creatures whom they half fed, 
half starved, fixed the calumny in the literature of the 
time. There was a decided improvement in the following 
age ; but the tone of its theology, in at least the sister 
kingdom, was unfavorable to the character of Knox. It 
was a time of spiritual death in the English Church ; and 
the cry of fanaticism raised against the reformer, chiefly 
on a civil plea, in the reign of Charles II., was prolonged, 
in the reign of Anne and the earlier Georges, on a purely 
religious one. Naturally enough, his beliefs were deemed 



84 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 



absurd and irrational by the defamers arid depredators of 
Whitefield; and there was no M'Crie to tell the Bundles 
and Atterburys of the time that the zealot whom they 
contemned and undervalued had been a fellow-laborer in 
the English Church with its Latimers and Cranmers, and 
had lent his assistance in framing the code of belief which 
they themselves had professed to receive, but for which in 
reality they cared so little. 

The tone of our Scottish literature in the last century 
was borrowed in part from our English neighbors, and in 
part from the French. Hume, with less liveliness but 
greater original powers than Voltaire, condescended, in a 
considerable degree, to imitate the historical style of that 
volatile and accomplished writer, and evinced a hostility 
equally bitter to whatever had the sacredness of religion 
- to recommend it. Robertson, Smollett, Kaimes, Adam 
Smith, Gilbert Stuart, Tytler, and Moore, had all caught 
the English mode and the English spirit, and were, in at 
least as marked a degree as any of their English contem- 
poraries, tinctured with infidelity. Hence, in part, the 
disrespect shown by almost all these writers to the mem- 
ory of Knox. Many of them, too, had imagination enough 
to evince a sympathy for the misfortunes of Mary, which 
a sense of her crimes and infamies seems to have checked 
in the friends and followers who would not fight for her at 
Carberry Hill, and who struck only a half-blow in her 
quarrel at Langside ; and the man who could attach more 
importance to the religion of a country than to the smiles 
of so fine a woman, was characterized as rude and brutal. 
Robertson's hostility to Knox is well known. Even Hume 
— who was by much too cool and too sagacious a man to 
share in the general admiration of Mary — could urge with 
him, as an argument of weight, that, if he only gave him 
up the princess, " he would have the compensatory satis- 
faction of seeing the reformer made sufficiently ridicu- 
lous." We are in possession of a volume of the " Edin- 
burgh Magazine," of the time when that periodical was 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 



85 



edited by Gilbert Stuart, and when the Moderate clergy 
of the south of Scotland were the chief contributors. The 
articles are temperate throughout, except on two subjects, 
— the Secession and John Knox ; but when these are in- 
troduced, we find that the writers seem to have lost all 
command of temper, or to have regarded as legitimate the 
foulest epithets of opprobrium and reproach. There is, in 
particular, one article on Knox, written apparently by the 
editor, in which our venerable reformer is described as 
mean, illiterate, narrow-minded, cruel, and libidinous ; and 
so completely does the engraver for the work appear to 
have entered into the writer's spirit, that the figure in an 
accompanying print wants only horns and a tail to render 
it complete. 

But whatever Gilbert Stuart might have thought of the 
literature of John Knox, it is certain the contemporaries 
of the reformer, both friends and enemies, estimated it 
very high. Nor in the present time are we without data 
on which to decide. The art of writing history in the 
vernacular tongue was not an art of the age. Even the 
great Bacon failed utterly in this department, nearly an 
age after, and produced, in his History of Henry VII., a 
work which has been quoted liberally by both Lord Kaimes 
and Sir Richard Steele, to show how very badly history 
maybe written. Knox's " History of the Reformation" is 
immensely superior to the history of Bacon. It displays 
more freedom and more power. There is a dramatic effect 
in some of the dialogues altogether fascinating, and there 
are touches of such simple pathos in the narrative that 
they affect even to tears. We would instance the closing 
scene in the life of the martyr Wishart, as described in 
the first volume. No one can glance over the passage 
without being convinced that the heart of the writer was 
a heart tender and compassionate in the first degree. We 
doubt not that it was written with wet eyes and a swelling 
heart. He relates, with almost New Testament simplicity, 
how the "said Mr. George Wishart, departing from the 

8 



86 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 



town of Haddington" under a presentiment of death, 
"took good night forever of all his acquaintances," and 
"how John Knox pressing hard to go with him," the de- 
voted man said, " Nay, return to your children, God's peo- 
ple, and God bless you ; one is sufficient for a sacrifice : " 
and how " the said John Knox unwillingly obeyed." He 
relates, further, after narrating the apprehension and trial 
of the martyr, "that the fire was made ready, and the 
stake, at the west port of the Castle of St. Andrews, near 
to the Priory; and that, directly over against the place, 
the castle windows were hung with rich hangings, and 
velvet cushions laid for the cardinal and the prelates, who 
came to feast their eyes with the torments of this innocent 
man ; " how that, " dreading lest he should be rescued by 
his friends, the cardinal had commanded that all the ord- 
nance of the castle should be bent right against the place 
of execution, and had ordered the gunners to be ready 
standing by their guns, until such time as his victim was 
burnt to ashes ; " how, " all this being done, they bound 
Mr. George's hands behind his back, and with sound of 
trumpet led him forth with the soldiers from the castle to 
the place of their cruel and wicked execution ; " how, " as 
he came forth of the castle gate, there met him certain beg- 
gars, asking of him alms, for GocVs sake, to ivhom he 
ansioered, ^ I want my hands wherewith I was wont to give 
you alms ; but the merciful Lord, of his benignity and 
abundant grace, that feedeth all men, vouchsafe to give you 
necessaries, both unto your body and souls ; ' " how, " after 
this, he was led to the fire with a rope about his neck and 
a chain of iron about his middle ; and how, kneeling down 
beside the faggots, he rose again, and thrice said these 
words, ' O thou Sovereign of the world, have mercy upon 
me; Father of Heaven, I commend my spirit into thy holy 
hands ; ' " how, " when he had made this prayer, he turned 
unto the people and said, ' I beseech you, Christian breth- 
ren and sisters, that ye be not offended at the Word of God, 
for the affliction and torment which ye see ready prepared 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 87 



for me ; but I exhort you that you love the Word of God, 
and suffer patiently, and with a comfortable heart, for the 
Word's sake, which is your undoubted salvation and ever- 
lasting comfort " how that " many more faithful words he 
spake unto them, taking no heed or care of the cruel tor- 
tures prepared for him ; " and how, " by and by, the trum- 
pet sounding, he was tied to the stake, and the fire kin- 
dled ; " how " the captain of the castle, for the love he bore 
to Mr. Wishartj dreio so near to the fire that the flame 
thereof did him harrh, and urged him to be of good cour- 
age, and to beg from God the forgiveness of his sins ; " 
and how the martyr answered him thus from the flames, 
" ' The fire torments my body, but no ways abates my 
spirit ; ' " how " then Mr. Wishart, looking steadfastly 
towards the cardinal, said, 4 He who in such state from 
that high place feedeth his eyes with my torments, within 
few clays shall be hanged out at the same window, to be 
seen with as much ignominy as he now leaneth there in 
pride ; ? " how, finally, " in short space thereafter, the fire 
being very great, he was consumed to powder." We can 
believe that the man who wrote this affecting narrative — 
the "ruffian Knox," the " barbarian who made Mary weep" 
— told his queen the very truth when he assured her that 
"he delighted not in the weeping of any of God's crea- 
tures; yea, that he could scarce abide the tears of his 
own boys when his own hands corrected them." Love and 
pity were assuredly no unwonted emotions in the large 
heart of him who " never feared the face of man." 

It is not as a historian, however, that the literary char- 
acter of Knox can be rated highest. His history, unlike 
Bacon's, which is rather overlabored than the reverse, 
seems, so far as regards composition, to have been carelessly 
written, — in the midst, doubtless, of the ceaseless round 
of harassing employments in which the latter portion of 
his life was spent. It is in his shorter compositions that 
his great ability as a writer is best shown ; and, with some 
of these before us, we speak advisedly when we assert that 



88 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 



lie "was decidedly the first man of either kingdom who 
wrote what would be deemed a good English style, tested 
by the present standard. There is a mellifluous flow and 
thorough ease in his sentences altogether astonishing, when 
we take into account the stiff inflexibility of the English 
language at that period, as shown in the prose writings of 
even his abler contemporaries. Whole colonies of half- 
naturalized Greek and Latin words had been just brought 
into the language ; and, as if unsuited to its genius, they 
performed their work clumsily and* heavily in even the 
hands of superior men. We instance the earlier homilies 
of the English Church. Almost every member of every 
sentence in these compositions is broken into two parts, the 
last of which generally repeats in Saxon English the idea 
which in the first is expressed in Latinized English. And 
hence their stiff and peculiar verbosity of style. In the 
more carefully written compositions of Knox there is none 
of this. Johnson has remarked of Milton, that the " heat 
of his genius sublimed his learning," and threw off merely 
the finer and more subtle parts into his poetry. In the 
same way, the genius of the great reformer seems to have 
fused into one pliant and homogeneous mass the language 
which, when employed by men of a lower order, was so 
heterogeneous and untractable. He seemed as if born to 
anticipate the improvements and refinements of an age yet 
distant, and this not merely in his knowledge of things, 
but in his command of words. Sir Walter Raleigh has 
been described by some of our higher critics as the first 
good prose writer of England; we beg to submit to the 
^reader the following prayer, written by Knox during the 
reign of Mary of Guise, nearly an age, be it remarked, 
before Sir Walter produced the great work on which his 
fame as a writer chiefly rests. We know not in the com- 
pass of our literature a more interesting composition. It 
was written at a time when the ashes of Walter Mill still 
blackened the public square of St. Andrews, and gives us 
no inadequate idea of the power of that eloquence chosen 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 



89 



by Deity as his honored instrument for the reformation of 
a kingdom. We adopt the punctuation and spelling of the 
oldest edition we have yet seen, — that of the year 1600. 

A Complaint of the Tyrannie used against the Saincts of God, con- 
taining a Confession of our Sinnes, and a Prayer for the Deliver- 
ance and Preservation of the Church, and Confusion of the 
Enemies. 

Eternall and everlasting God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who hast commanded us to pray, and promised to hear us, even 
when we doe call from the pit of desperation, the miseries of these 
our most wicked dayes compel us to poure forth before thee the 
complaintes of our wretched hearts, oppressed with sorrow. Our 
eyes doe behold, and our eares doe heare, the calamities and oppres- 
sion which no tongue can expresse, neither yet, alas, doe our dull 
hearts rightlie consider the same ; for the heathen are entred into 
thine inheritance, they have polluted thy sanctuarie, prophaned and 
abolished thy blessed institutions, moste cruellie murthered, and 
daylie doe murther thy deare children ; thou hast exalted the arm 
and force of our enemies, thou hast exposed us a prey to ignominie 
and shame, before such as persecute thy trueth ; their wayes doe 
prosper, they glorie in mischiefe, and speake proudlie against the 
honour of thy name ; thou goest not forth as captaine before our 
hostes ; the edge of our sworde, which sometimes was most sharpe, 
is now blunte, and doeth returne without victorie in battell. 

It appeareth to our enemies, O Lord, that thou hast broken that 
league which of thy mercie and goodnesse thou hast made with thy 
Church : For the libertie which they hav« to kill thy children like 
sheep, and to shed their blood, no man resisting, doeth so blind and 
puffe them up with pride, that they ashame not to affirme, that thou 
regardest not our intreating. Thy long suffering and patience 
maketh them bold from crueltie to proceed to the blasphemie of thy 
name. And in the mean season, alas, we do not consider the 
heavenesse of our sinnes, which long have deserved at thy hands 
not onlie these temporall plagues, but also the torments prepared for 
the inobedient ; for we knowing thy blessed will, have not applyed 
our diligence to obey the same, but have followed, for the most part, 
the vaine conversation of the blinde world : and therefore in verie 
justice hast thou visited our unthankfulnesse. But, O Lord, if thou 
shalt observe and keep in mind for ever the iniquities of thy 

8* 



90 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 



children, then shall no flesh abide nor be saved in thy presence. And 
therefore we, convicted in our own conscience, that most justlie we 
suffer, as punished by thy hand, doe nevertheless call for mercie, 
according to promise : And first we desire to be corrected with the 
rodde of thy children, by the which we may be brought to a perfect 
hatred of sinne, and of ourselves ; and therefore, that it would please 
thee, for Christ Jesus thy Sonne's sake, to shew us, and to thy whole 
Church universally persecuted, the same favour and grace that some- 
times thou diddest, when the chief members of the same for anguish 
and fear were compelled to crie, Why have the nations raged ? 
Why have the people made uproares ? And why have princes and 
kings conjured against thine anointed Christ Jesus ? Then diddest 
thou wonderfullie assist and preserve thy small and dispersed flock ; 
then diddest thou burst the barres and gates of yron ; then diddest 
thou shake the foundations of strong prisons ; then diddest thou 
plague the cruell persecutors ; and then gavest thou tranquilitie and 
rest, after those raging stormes and cruell afflictions. 

O Lord, thou remainest one for ever; we have offended, and are 
unworthie of anie deliverance ; but worthie art thou to be a true 
and constant God, and worthie is thy deare Sonne, Christ Jesus, 
that thou shouldest glorifie his name, and revenge the blaspemie 
spoken against the trueth of his gospel, which is by our adversaries 
damned as a doctrine deceaveable and false. Yea, the blood of thy 
Sonne is trodden under feet, in that the blood of his members is shed 
for witnessing of thy trueth ; and therefore, O Lord, behold not the 
unworthinesse of us that call for the redresse of these enormities, 
neither let our imperfections stop thy mercies from us ; but behold 
the face of thine anointed Christ Jesus, and let the equitie of our 
cause prevaile in thy presence ; let the blood of thy saincts which is 
shed be openlie revenged in the eyes of thy Church, that mortall 
men may know the vanitie of their counsells, and that thy children 
may have a taste of thine eternal goodness. And seeing that from 
that man of sinne, that Romane Antichrist, the chiefe adversarie to 
thy deare Sonne, doth all iniquitie spring, and mischiefe proceede, 
let it please thy Fatherlie mercie, more and more to reveale his 
deceit and tyrannie to the world : open the eyes of princes and 
magistrates, that clearly they may see how shamefullie they have 
bene abused by his deceaveable wayes ; how by him they are com- 
pelled most cruellie to shed the blood of thy saincts, and by violence 
refuse thy new and eternall Testament ; that they in deep consider- 
ation of these grivous offences, may unfainedlie lament their hor- 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OP KNOX. 91 



rible defection from Christ Jesus thy Sonne; from henceforth study- 
ing to promote his glorie in the dominions committed to their charges, 
that so yet once again the glorie of thy gospell may appeare to the 
world. And seeing also that the chief strength of that odious beast 
consisteth in the dissension of princes, let it please thee, O Father, 
which hast claimed to thyself to be called the God of Peace, to unite 
and knitte in perfect love the hearts of all those that look for the 
life everlasting. Let no craft of Sathan move them to warre one 
against another, neither yet to maintaine by their force and strength 
that kingdome of darknesse ; but rather that godlie they may con- 
spire (illuminated by thy Word), to root out from among them all 
superstition with the maintainers of the same. 

These, thy graces, O Lord, we unfainedlie desire to be poured 
forth upon all realms and nations ; but principallie, according to that 
duetie which thou requirest of us, we most earnestlie desire that the 
heartes of the inhabitants of England and Scotland, whom the 
malice and craft of Sathan, and of his supportes, of manie yeers 
have dissevered, may continue in that godlie unitie which now, of 
late, it hath pleased thee to give them, being knitted together in the 
unitie of thy Word : Open their eyes that clearlie they may behold 
the bondage and miserie which is purposed against them both ; and 
give unto them wisdome to avoide the same, in such sort that, in 
their godlie concorde, thy name may be glorified, and thy dispersed 
flock comforted and relieved. 

The commonwealthes, O Lord, where thy gospell is trulie preached, 
and harbour granted to the afflicted members of Christ's bodie, we 
commend to thy protection and mercie ; be thou unto them a defence 
and buckler. Be thou a watchman to their walles, and a perpetuall 
safeguard to their cities, that the crafty assaults of their enemies, 
repulsed by thy power, thy gospell may have free passage from one 
nation to another ; and let all preachers and ministers of the same 
have the gifts of thy Holie Spirit in such aboundance as thy godlie 
wisdome shall know to be expedient for the perfect instruction of 
that flock which thou hast redeemed with the precious blood of thine 
onlie and well-beloved Sonne Jesus Christ. Purge their hearts from 
all kind of superstition, from ambition, and vaine glorie, by which 
Sathan continuallie laboureth to stirre up ungodlie contention, and 
let them so consent in the unitie of thy trueth, that neither the 
estimation which they have of men, neither the vaine opinions which 
they have conceived by their writinges, prevaile in them against the 
cleare understanding of thy blessed Word. 



92 



THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 



And now, last, O Lord, we moste humblie beseech thee, according 
to that prayer of thy dear Sonne our Lord Jesus, so to sanctifie and 
confirine us in thine eternal veritie, that neither the love of life 
temporal, nor yet the feare of torments and corporall death, cause 
us to denie the same when the confession of our faith shall be 
required of us ; but so assist us, with the power of thy Spirit, that 
not onlie boldlie we may confess thee, O Father of mercies, to be 
the true God alone, and whom thou hast sent, our Lord Jesus, to be 
the only Saviour of the world, but also, that constantlie we may 
withstand all doctrine repugning to thy eternall trueth, revealed to 
us in thy most blessed Word. Remove from our hearts the blind 
love of ourselves ; and so rule thou all the actions of our life, that 
in us thy godlie name may be glorified, thy Church edified, and 
Sathan finally confounded by the power and means of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be all praise 
and glory, before thy congregation now and ever. 

Arise, O Lord, and let thine enemies be ashamed, let them flee 
from thy presence that hate thy godly name ; let the grones of thy 
prisoners enter in before thee, and preserve by thy power such as 
be appointed to death ; let not thine enemies thus triumph to the 
end, but let them understand, that against thee they fight : preserve 
and defend the vine which thy right hand hath planted, and let all 
nations see the glory of thine Anointed. 

Hasten, Lord, and tarrie not. 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



These articles upon Dr. Thomas M'Crie have no direct bearing 
upon the Disruption controversy. They illustrate, however, in a 
way eminently clear and pertinent, the precise manner in which the 
principles then at stake were apprehended by Mr. Miller, and con- 
stitute a masterly sketch of the beginnings of the contest in connec- 
tion with the ecclesiastical history of Scotland in the present cen- 
tury. For these reasons, and on account of their intrinsic value as 
embracing a powerful and vivid delineation of one of the greatest 
Presbyterian divines, it has been deemed proper to give them a place 
in the volume. — Ed. 



ARTICLE FIRST. 

It is now sixteen years since we first saw the late Dr. 
M'Crie. We had learned to love and respect him at even 
an earlier period, not merely as an honest and truly able 
man, but also as a genuine type and representative of the 
Christian patriots of Scotland, — those worthies of other 
days, whose names we had been taught to pronounce in 
our childhood as at once the wisest and warmest friends of 
the people. All our sympathies, national, Presbyterian, and 
literary, had taken part together in our admiration of the 
historian of Knox. There was an air of positive romance 
about his history as a man of letters, which, by exciting 



94 



DE. THOMAS m'CBIE. 



our imagination, endeared him to us the more. Waller 
has remarked of the poet Denham, "that he broke out 
like the Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong, when 
nobody was aware or in the least suspected it." But with 
how much more force does the remark apply to Dr. M'Crie ? 
Half the literary power of the country had been employed 
for more than a hundred years in blackening the memory 
of our noble-hearted reformers. Hume, at once the shrewd- 
est infidel that ever opposed the truth and the ablest his- 
torian that ever perverted it, had done his worst. Gilbert 
Stuart, no mean writer, had done his worst too, and in 
even a bitterer spirit. Tytler, Whitaker, and a whole host 
of others, including some of our most popular poets, had 
followed in their track ; and the pictures of the more wary 
but not less insidious Robertson — pictures illustrative of 
the remark of Pope, that what men are taught to pity they 
soon learn to love — had prejudiced the public mind even 
more powerfully against the opponents of Mary than the 
attacks of more open assailants. The memory of Knox 
and his coadjutors was pilloried in the literature of the 
country ; every witling, as he passed by, flung his handful 
of filth ; and that portion of our Presbyterian people who, 
looking into the past through the religious medium, and 
believing that our reformers, as men awakened to a sense 
of the truth, were far different from what our literati repre- 
sented them, could only retain for themselves the juster 
estimate of their fathers regarding them, without influenc- 
ing in the least the opinions of their contemporaries. Such 
was the state of things when a nameless champion entered 
the lists, and threw down his gauntlet in the cause of 
Knox and the reformers. Who or what was he ? A per- 
son who had been engaged a few years before in some 
obscure squabble, which he had seemed to think of vast 
importance, forsooth, but which had interested no one but 
himself and the opponents, who, with the aid of the Court 
of Session, had put him down, and which really no one had 
thought worth while trying to understand. Well, but what 



DR. THOMAS M ? CRIE. 



95 



was the result on this occasion ? The literature of a whole 
century went down before him, — Hume, Stuart, Tytler, 
Whitaker, Robertson, and the poets, — all the great names 
among the dead ; and the living — men of a lower stature 
— he foiled with scarce half an effort. All went down who 
opposed him, and the rest stood warily aloof. The far 
known " Chaldee Manuscript," so much more witty than 
reverent, is happy in its description of this redoubtable 
champion ; for, with all its mixture of the grotesque, it has 
at once the merit of being poetical and true. "And the 
Griffin," says the Manuscript, " came with a roll of the 
names of those whose blood had been shed, between his 
teeth ; and I saw him standing over the body of one that 
had been buried long in the grave, defending it from all 
men ; and, behold, there were none which durst come near 
him." 

We had just passed our first week in this part of the 
country, a little out of town, early in 1824, and had walked 
into Edinburgh on the Sabbath morning to see the Doctor 
and hear him preach. Only two evenings before, we had 
been sauntering, after the labors of the day, along one of 
the green lanes of Liberton, and had met with a gentle- 
man whose appearance had struck us as being as much the 
reverse of commonplace as any we had ever seen. He was 
an erect, spare, tall man — rather above, we should have 
supposed, than under six feet, though perhaps his carriage, 
which had much quiet dignity in it, and a good deal of the 
military air, might have led to an over-estimate. The 
countenance was pale, we would have said almost sallow, 
and the cast of expression somewhat melancholy; but 
there was a wakeful penetration in the dark eyes, and an 
air of sedate power and reflection so legibly stamped on 
every feature, that we were irresistibly impressed with the 
idea he could be no ordinary man. We stood looking 
after him. He wore a brown great-coat over a suit of 
black, the neck a good deal whitened by powder; and the 
rim of the hat behind, which was slightly turned up, bore 



96 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



a similar stain. Who can that possibly be ? we thought. 
Shall we impart to the reader the recollection which flashed 
into our mind, — from an association awakened, doubtless, 
by what we deemed the half-military, half-clerical air of 
the stranger ? — it was that of Sir Richard Steele's story of 
the devout old military chaplain, who, on being insulted 
by a foul-mouthed, blasphemous young officer, challenged 
him, fought and disarmed him, and then, ere he took him 
to mercy, made him kneel down and ask pardon, not of 
him, but of the Being whom he had blasphemed. On the 
Sunday morning we contrived to find our way to the 
Doctor's chapel about half an hour ere divine service 
began, and planted ourselves in one of the empty pews 
(for the congregation had not yet assembled) in front of 
the pulpit. The people began to gather ; — we thought, 
but it might not be so, that more than the usual propor- 
tion were elderly ; a respectable looking, well-dressed man, 
accompanied by his wife and family, entered the pew 
which we had so unceremoniously appropriated, and we 
rose to leave it for the passage, a good deal abashed at 
feeling, for the first time, that we were an intruder, for we 
had thought previously of only the Doctor. The man, 
however, politely insisted that we should keep our seat. On 
sitting down again, we found that the Doctor had mean- 
while entered the pulpit, and we at once recognized in the 
historian of Knox and Melville the military chaplain whom 
we had met in the green lane. 

We were first struck by the great simplicity of his man- 
ner. It reminded us of a remark of Robertson's, on his 
return from his visit to London, immediately after, the 
publication of his History of Scotland. The extraordinary 
merit of the work had introduced him to all the more 
eminent literati of the time ; and he was asked, on coming 
back, by a friend in Edinburgh, whether he thought the 
celebrated men, his new acquaintances, varied as they were 
in genius and acquirement, had any one trait in common. 
" Yes," replied the historian, " one trait at least, and a very 



DE. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



97 



striking one ; all the truly great among them are marked 
by a child-like simplicity of manner." The service went 
on. There was a solemn impressiveness about the Doc- 
tor's prayers, which were, in the best sense of the term } 
extempore, that was well suited to lead our thoughts from 
himself to the Being whom he addressed. There was little 
exertion of voice, and no striking combinations of set 
phrases, fine, doubtless, when they are new, but on which 
it is possible to ring the changes until they become com- 
monplace and lose their meaning ; but there was what was 
much better, — a continuous stream of thought, sobered by 
a feeling of devout reverence, which found ready entrance 
into the mind, and subdued it into seriousness. He en- 
tered upon his discourse. We were again struck by the 
great simplicity of his manner and style, and listened, 
rather soothed and pleased by his lucid statements of 
important truths, grounded, if we may so express our- 
selves, on a deep substratum of serious feeling, than sur- 
prised by any marked originality of view. By and by, 
however, when the first obvious principles were laid 
down, the Doctor began to draw inferences. Ah ! thought 
we, as we sat up erect in the pew, there now is something 
we never heard before. The discourse, simple and quiet 
at its commencement, had assumed a new character. The 
unquestioned but common truths were but the foundations 
of the edifice; the edifice itself was such a one as the 
historian of Knox and Melville could alone have erected. 
There were remarks on human nature, that, from their 
graphic shrewdness, reminded us of Crabbe, and yet the 
mode was entirely different ; there were gleams of fancy, 
that, falling for a moment on some of the remoter recesses 
of the subject, lighted them up into sudden brightness, 
and, when fully shown, the gleam disappeared ; there were 
strokes of eloquence, condensed at times into a single 
sentence, that found their way direct to the heart; and 
far conclusions attained by a few steps through vistas of 
thought unopened before. We would perhaps not have 

9 



98 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



termed the discourse a philosophic one at the time we 
were listening to it : men are misled by the mere conven- 
tionalities of thought — the set terms and phrases in 
which thought is usually embodied ; and according to the 
pattern of these are they apt to judge and classify the 
thoughts themselves. But the reverse process is surely 
the true one : it is the man, not the dress, to which we are 
to look, — the soul, not the body ; and, tried by this pro- 
cess, the Doctor's discourse was philosophic in the best 
and highest sense of the term ; for what is philosophy but 
good sense, on an extended scale, employed in discovering 
the remote causes of things, or in anticipating their distant 
effects ? His plain, simple style reminded us of Swift's 
definition — "Proper words in their proper places." There 
was nothing very striking in the general groundwork, only 
it would be found no easy matter to alter any one of his 
words for a better. Even his occasional Scotticisms had 
invariably more point and a larger meaning than the nearly 
synonymous English phrases which a fastidious critic might 
have substituted for them. But style, and even thought, 
were but subordinate matters in the pulpit ministrations 
of Dr. M'Crie. Never have we listened to a preacher — 
and from that day until we quitted the district he was 
almost our only minister — on whose judgment and integ- 
rity we could more thoroughly depend. Scotchmen, espe- 
cially the Presbyterian Scotch, are naturally sticklers for 
the right of private judgment, and less disposed than 
almost any other people to yield themselves up implicitly 
to their religious teachers ; and hence it is that, though 
Moderatism has been encamped in the Church for more 
than a century, it has acquired no popular basis. To the 
Doctor, however, we soon learned to give ourselves up 
entirely. JSTot that he saved us the trouble of thought ; — 
his discourses were by much too intellectual for that, and 
his remarks had a germinative quality, suited to fill the 
mind which received them in their unbroken vitality : but 
if he did not save us the trouble of thought, he at least 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



99 



saved us the trouble of suspicion. We could lean our- 
selves unsuspectingly on his judgment; nature had formed 
him for a leader; and his capacious understanding and 
almost instinctive sagacity were heightened and strength- 
ened by other and even more valuable qualities — the depth 
of his devotional feelings, and the high-toned rectitude of 
the moral sense. 

The Sunday on which we first heard Dr. M'Crie was, as 
we have said, early in the season. There had been a sud- 
den change of weather a few days before, and there was a 
great deal of coughing in the chapel. We were annoyed 
by finding some of the pithiest remarks in the discourse 
broken in upon by some remorseless cougher, and mu- 
tilated, so far at least as the listeners were concerned ; and 
the Doctor seemed somewhat annoyed too. He knew 
better, however, than we did, in what degree even cough- 
ing lies under the restraint of the will; he knew, too, 
what we did not, that when people are very much sur- 
prised they cease to cough. Suddenly the Doctor stopped 
short in the middle of his argument ; every face in the 
chapel was turned to the pulpit, and for a full minute so 
dead was the stillness that a pin might be heard to drop. 
" I see, my friends," he said, with a suppressed smile, " you 
can all be quiet enough when I am quiet." It would be 
difficult to imagine a better humored rebuke, but certainly 
never was there a more effectual one. A suppressed cough 
might occasionally be heard during the rest of the service, 
but not even the tithe of what had disturbed it before. 
Simple as the incident may seem, we remember being 
much struck by it, as illustrative of the peculiar shrewd- 
ness of the character. 

We have but just risen from the perusal of the Life of 
Dr. M'Crie by his son, the bulkiest volume we ever ran over 
at a sitting, and certainly one oi the most interesting we 
have ever read. We had thought that the subject of the 
memoir could not have risen in our esteem, and, now that 
we have communicated our sentiments and recollections 



100 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



of him to the reader, others might perhaps have thought 
so too ; but we have been mistaken ; our respect for his 
memory is higher now than it ever was before. The whole 
character lies open before us, — magnanimous, wise, sin- 
cere, humble, affectionate, invincibly honest, consistently 
devout ; and the more thoroughly we study it, the more 
do we find to love and admire. It forms a mirror by which 
to dress the heart ; it furnishes a rule by which to regulate 
the understanding. We contemplate with a feeling of 
awe the far-sighted character of his intellect, — to use the 
language of Gowper, " the terrible sagacity that informed 
his heart," in anticipating coming events. We have al- 
luded to his first controversy. It commenced just thirty- 
seven years ago, and involved him in great difficulty and 
distress ; many of his friends and his people forsook him ; 
he was dispossessed of his chapel by the strong arm of the 
law; he was deposed and excommunicated hj his brethren. 
Yes, the greatest and ablest, and certainly one of the best 
and most devout Dissenters Scotland ever produced, was 
deposed and excommunicated : for what ? — simply for 
contumacy and disobedience to the synod of which he was 
a member. But disobedience in what ? That could not be 
understood : it involved some metaphysical point about the 
civil magistrate, and the duty of nations as such in their 
religious character. Lawyers and judges could see noth- 
ing in it ; and they decided the case merely as one of con- 
tumacy. The press and the pulpit were alike silent. The 
matter was one of no interest or importance whatever, 
except to the sufferer for conscience' sake; and he pub- 
lished a "Statement" on the subject, which no one read, 
and asserted that the principles which he opposed were 
soon to shake the whole country, and subvert all its reli- 
gious institutions. " But we will not live to see that day," 
said one of his humbler, friends. " I don't know that," 
was the reply ; " I feel persuaded you will see the fruits of 
these principles in a quarter of a century" Men know 
something better about them now. It was the great Yol- 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



101 



untary contest which this remarkable man saw so clearly 
at this early period; and his "Statement" has since been 
eagerly sought after and reprinted, as the ablest defence 
of religious establishments which has yet appeared. To 
enrploy his own striking figure, he had seen "in the cloud 
like the man's hand, the tempest which was soon to darken 
the heavens, the earth, and the sea." Contrast with this 
wonderful power the benevolence and humility of the 
character. "People of less reach of mind," says one of his 
friends, "never can appreciate aright the disinterested 
patience with which he would hear out a long story from 
some prosy person, or walk far to see some poor body, or 
even, as I have known bim do, go six miles out of town, 
that he might communicate by word of mouth, and with 
the greatest delicacy, some painful news to a servant 
maid." 

ARTICLE SECOND. 

Thomas M'Crie was born in the year 1772, at Dunse, in 
Berwickshire, a town which has been the birthplace of 
at least two other distinguished men, — Duns Scotus, the 
famous scholastic doctor of the fourteenth century, and 
Thomas Boston, the well-known author of the " Fourfold 
State." His parents, persons of great worth, belonged to 
that middle class among the people which may be regarded 
as forming the staple of our population, and on whose 
general character that of the country always depends. His 
father, whose name was also Thomas, a strictly religious 
man, of strong good sense and much general intelligence, 
was a manufacturer and merchant. His mother, Mary 
Hood, a tender-hearted and affectionate woman, of singu- 
lar piety and devotedness, was the daughter of a re- 
spectable farmer. Thomas, their first-born, seemed to 
share in the character of both. He was a manly little 
fellow, rational beyond his years, fond of robust exercises, 
skilled in athletic games, and a fearless rider j but there 

r 



102 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



were other and gentler elements in his nature, — a tender' 
ness and sensibility of heart almost feminine, and a warmth 
and strength of affection not often equalled. Never, in 
any instance, were mother and son more thoroughly at- 
tached. She was long in delicate health ; and the hours 
wasted by his companions in play were spent by Thomas 
in watching beside his mother's sick-bed, and in perform- 
ing for her all the little acts of kindness which her situa- 
tion required. And well was his tenderness repaid; in 
after-life he has frequently been heard to trace to her 
example, her instructions, and her prayers, his first serious 
impressions of religion. 

"Common birds fiy in crowds," says the romantic Sir 
Philip Sydney, " but the eagle goes forth alone." It was 
soon found that the little l^oy, the manufacturer's son, dif- 
fered from all his fellows. He had an insatiable appetite 
for knowledge, that, the more it was fed, strengthened the 
more. He was sedate, too, and studious ; and often, when 
he wandered out alone into the fields to pore over his books, 
food and play and his companions were all alike forgotten, 
and the live-long day passed happily in the solitude. His 
father rather discouraged the prosecution of his studies; 
"he would not," he said, "make one of his sons a gentle- 
man at the expense of the rest;" but the hopes of the 
affectionate mother had been awakened in the behalf of 
her favorite son ; and, through the kind interference of the 
boy's maternal grandfather, he was jjermitted to pursue 
what he so ardently inclined. Had the decision been 
otherwise, the world would probably have heard of him, 
not as the deeply-learned historian of Knox and Melville, 
but as a self-taught writer of powerful genius ; for unques- 
tionably the development of the larger minds is but lit^ 
dependent on circumstances, and the mind of M'Crie 
belonged to the larger order. And yet we have little 
doubt, when we consider how much the world has owed 
to his unequalled powers of research, that his usefulness, 
if not his celebrity, depended materially on the decision. 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



103 



In his sixteenth year he set out for the first time to attend 
the classes at the University of Edinburgh, and his pious 
and attached mother, whorn he lost in about a twelve- 
month after, but whom he never forgot, accompanied him 
part of the way, and parted from him on Coldingham 
Moor. Before bidding him farewell, she led him behind a 
rock, a little way off the road, and there, kneeling down 
with him, she affectionately and solemnly devoted him to 
the service of God, and earnestly commended him to his 
fatherly care. The grave closed over her; nearly half a 
century passed by; the time had well-nigh arrived when 
the son whom she had blessed, and for whom she had 
prayed, was to rest from his labors; and then she appeared 
to him in a dream, as he had seen her behind the rock 
upon the moor, and beckoned upon him to follow her, 
which he promised to do. Dr. M'Crie was no weak or 
superstitious man, but he did not on this occasion slight 
the solemn warning, and the result showed that he only 
regarded it in the proper light. 

He passed through college with little show, but with 
great profit : knowledge was his daily food, and he could 
not exist without it. The languages, moral and political 
science, history, philology, eloquence, and in some degree 
poetry, were his favorite studies. His every-day compan- 
ions among the classics were Tacitus, Livy, and Cicero; 
and he sedulously kept up his Latin reading to the close of 
his life. He excelled, too, in his knowledge of Greek. The 
English authors he most valued were the masculine think- 
ers of our literature ; the Lockes, Smiths, Butlers, Reids, 
and Humes. He was a thorough admirer of the character 
and the writings of one who, at an after period, expressed 
an equally high admiration of him and of his productions, 
— his professor, Dugald Stewart. TTe need hardly add, 
that he was not content with being merely a reader of 
books; he cultivated a close acquaintance with his humbler 
countrymen ; and the future historian might often be found 
in some back shop, ensconced among the members of a 



104 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



reading club, listening to the news of the day, and the 
accompanying remarks. He had thrown himself at an 
early period on his own resources : he had taught succes- 
sively two country schools in the neighborhood of Dunse 
before completing his fifteenth year, and had contrived — 
a task of some difficulty, one should think — both to con- 
trol his pupils when under his charge in school, and to play 
with them when they got out. In his eighteenth year he 
removed to Brechin, where he continued to teach a school 
for three years longer, and of which he may be regarded 
as the founder ; for he began with only three pupils, and 
ere he quitted it he had well-nigh filled the house. It still 
continues to exist. His character at this early period of 
his life, including the space between his eighteenth and 
his twenty-first year, is well described by one of his old 
pupils, the Rev. Mr. Gray of Brechin, as a happy mixture 
of playfulness and sobriety. Exemplary in conduct, a fre- 
quenter of fellowship meetings, attached to the company 
and converse of unlettered Christians, strict in his observ- 
ance of the Sabbath, and much in religious duty, a great 
consumer, withal, of the midnight oil, — he was yet one 
of the most playful, ready-witted, buoyant-spirited, happy 
young men in the country side. No one could be readier 
for an adventure, or fonder of innocent amusement ; and 
in exercises of skill or peril he distanced competition. 
It could not be anticipated at this stage of his life that he 
was to write the Lives of Knox and Melville ; " but those 
who best knew him," says Mr. Gray, " had already set him 
down as a very likely person, did the occasion offer, for 
accomplishing some of their boldest deeds." "We were 
not mistaken, it seems, in our first impression of the Doc- 
tor, or in recognizing in his quiet and yet dignified air a 
mixture of the clerical and the military. He was as fitted 
by nature to lead a battalion to the charge, as qualified by 
grace to direct the devotions of a congregation. 

The native weight of his character began to be felt. He 
was licensed to be a preacher of the gospel by the Asso- 



DR. THOMAS M'CEIE. 



105 



ciate Synod of Kelso, in 1795, and received, only a month 
alter, a unanimous call to become minister of an Associate 
congregation in Edinburgh, which anticipated and frus- 
trated the call of another respectable congregation of the 
same body who were likewise solicitous to secure him as 
their pastor. The people do sometimes discern merit, and 
make amends for their rejection of Youngs and Edwardses 1 
by their anxiety to secure the services of APCries. It is 
an interesting fact, that he had a strong presentiment, long 
ere his appointment, of being settled as a minister in Ed- 
inburgh. — the only field, be it remembered, in which his 
truly important historical labors could be profitably pur- 
sued. Shortly after his settlement he was united in mar- 
riage to a lady to whom he had been long and ardently 
attached — a person of great sweetness of disposition, ex- 
emplary prudence and affection, and with whom he enjoyed 
much happiness. He was assiduous in his ministerial labors; 
our readers already know the character of his pulpit min- 
istrations. His week-day services were not less valuable ; 
and there was a frankness and kindness of disposition 
about him that recommended him powerfully to the affec- 
tions of his people. The Doctor was one of those rare 
individuals who always think of the interests of others in 
the first place, and of their own last. His congregation 
rapidly increased ; but it was composed mostly of the 
humbler classes of society; and his income, which had not 
been growing in proportion, was inadequate to support his 
station in a large city, and provide for the wants of an 
increasing family. Years of scarcity, and the revolution- 
ary war, bore heavily upon all classes ; and the price of 
provisions about the year 1799 rose to a height unequalled 
at any previous period. His people felt that duty de- 
manded an effort, and they met among themselves to pro- 
pose an addition to his stipend. 1ST o sooner, however, had 

• 

l Mr. Young and Mr. Edward; vrere the t-ejed^d presentees to Auchterarder 
and fctrathbogie. 



106 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



the intention reached their minister's ears than he clapped 
his veto upon it at once. The times, to be sure, might 
bear somewhat hardly upon him, but then they could not 
bear less hardly upon his people. The expense of living, 
he remarked, in a letter which he addressed to them on the 
subject, and which they gratefully inscribed among the 
congregational minutes, had, indeed, been increasing for 
some time past, but the income of tradespeople had not 
increased in proportion; and as the greater part of the 
body were of that description, he could not permit the 
sacrifice which their feelings had so kindly suggested. 
Worse times soon followed ; and in the long-remembered 
year 1800, when our fields, according to Wordsworth, 
" were left with half a harvest," and a general scarcity of 
employment immensely heightened the evil, he came un- 
hesitatingly forward, and proposed in form to give up a 
.portion of his already too scanty income. His people, 
however, were not to be thus overcome by their disinter- 
ested and generous pastor, and the proposal, therefore, was 
gratefully but firmly declined. It would be no difficult 
matter to find striking foils to these instances of high- 
toned and unselfish feeling among some of the most noisy 
advocates of Voluntaryism. 

He was now on the eve of entering his first great con- 
troversy. At the period of his license the synod were 
contemplating certain changes in the profession of their 
body, affecting, among other things, the old received opin- 
ion regarding the power of the civil magistrate in reli- 
gious matters. Young, fearless, and ardent, the frank and 
open-hearted probationer had adopted all the more liberal 
opinions of the age. He had been smit with the opening 
glories of the French Revolution, so soon to be quenched 
in blood ; his views of ecclesiasticaf polity had been 
taken through a somewhat similar medium, and the con- 
templated changes accorded well with his hastily-formed 
conclusions. He objected, therefore, against taking the 
formula as it then stood, without some qualification cor- 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



10T 



responding with the anticipated change ; and the objection 
was more than sustained — it was highly approved of, and 
made the groundwork of a general declaration. Bitterly 
did he afterwards regret this rash step, and the result to 
which it had led. His mind was not one of the super- 
ficial and ordinary class, that are content to flutter over 
the surfaces of things. He deeply revolved the subject; 
applied the principle which it embodied to the events of 
the past ; followed it, with that far-seeing sagacity in 
which he excelled all his contemporaries, into its remote 
consequences; and, convinced that he had erred egre- 
giously, he joined with five of his brethren, all men of the 
highest character, in remonstrating with the synod against 
the proposed change of the formula. He felt the mortify- 
ing awkwardness of his position ; but principle demanded, 
not that he should appear consistent, but that he should 
do what he had ascertained to be right ; and feeling, there- 
fore, was sacrificed to duty. The great bulk of his brethren 
deemed the matter one of little consequence. He had 
come to know better : that principle could not be one of 
slight importance which, if it had been generally operative 
in the past, would have effectually prevented the Protes- 
tant Reformation, and which, if carried out to its legitimate 
effects, would shake the whole country, and overturn all 
its religious institutions. And such was the gloomy result 
which he at this period ominously anticipated. He peti- 
tioned the synod, and, referring to his former ill-weighed 
scruples, expressed his deep regret for the rash step to 
which they had led, and the great distress in which he had 
been plunged by the reflection that he might have been 
thus instrumental in unhinging the principles of others. 
There is no portion of his biography in which we find the 
moral sense more nobly predominant than during this 
period of distress. The intensity of his feelings visibly 
affected his health. " What would I give," he says, in a 
letter to one of his friends at this period, " to have some 
of my years blotted out ! I think my situation worse than 



108 



DK. THOMAS M'CEIE. 



that of the other brethren, and need to be taught the 
lesson of the apostle, ' There hath no temptation taken 
you but such as is common to men.'" His history at this 
period, with that of the few friends who made common 
cause with him, closely resembles the history of the first 
founders of the Secession. They alike stood upon the old 
ground, a small and despised minority, accused of sectarian 
narrowness and a want of charity, protesting and remon- 
strating against what they deemed dangerous and uncon- 
stitutional innovations, but protesting and remonstrating 
in vain. Matters soon reached their crisis. The synod 
enacted their new Narrative and Testimony into a term 
of communion. The protesters stood firm; and though 
the innovators were liberal enough to propose receiving 
them into their body, it was only on condition that, what- 
ever they might think of the new principles themselves, 
they should neither impugn nor oppose them from the 
pulpit or the press. Moderatism would have received 
Fisher and the Erskines on exactly the same terms ; and 
neither the Doctor nor his coadjutors were unworthy of 
the first fathers of the Secession, nor disposed to act a part 
which involved a dereliction of principle so gross. The 
protesters, therefore, as they were termed, now reduced to 
four, — for death had recently been thinning their num- 
bers, — formed themselves into a Presbytery, and drew up 
a deed of constitution, in which they declared that, finding 
themselves virtually secluded from ministerial and Chris- 
tian communion, and unable, with a good conscience, and 
consistently with their vows, to comply with the new 
terms, they were reluctantly driven in this state of seclu- 
sion to constitute themselves an independent body, adher- 
ing to the true constitution of the Reformed Church of 
Scotland and the original Testimony. The synod, mean- 
while, unconscious of what was passing, was employed in 
deposing one of the refractory four, — a person who had 
rendered himself particularly obnoxious to some of the 
leading members, as " disorderly and a schismatic ; " they 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



109 



were still sitting when the intelligence reached them of 
the act of independence; and, with a haste which was at 
least indecent, they proceeded, without the formalities of a 
legal process, to pass sentence of deposition and excommu- 
nication on a still more obnoxious and formidable member 
of the body — Thomas M'Crie. He was deposed and 
excommunicated, therefore, — thrust out of the synagogue 
for conscience' sake, — on the 2d September, 1806. 

A time of great suffering ensued. Very brave men may 
bear very tender hearts, and the subject of our brief me- 
moir, though there never lived a more determined asserter 
of a good cause, was no hard, unfeeling stoic. The sentence 
of his deposition was intimated by one of the estranged 
brethren of the majority, from his own pulpit ; many of 
his old friends forsook him, and more than half his peo- 
ple. There was an action raised against him in the Court 
of Session, which terminated in wresting from him his 
chapel. He saw his brethren involved in the same general 
calamity ; interdicts, sheriff officers, legal prosecutions, 
and even military force, called into action against them, 
and employed, strange to say, in carrying into effect sen- 
tences grounded expressly on ecclesiastical censures, and 
at the instance of enemies to all magisterial interference in 
things sacred. But error is ever inconsistent. Nor is the 
sum of his sufferings on this occasion yet complete. He 
heard the gibes of his brethren in the Church reechoed by 
the wits of the bar and the judges on the bench ; he found 
himself isolated in the midst of society, — shunned even 
by all the evangelical ministers of Edinburgh as a narrow- 
minded and obstinate bigot, — a man who could bring his 
wife and family to poverty and contempt rather than abate 
one jot of his antiquated and metaphysical scruples. What 
supported him meanwhile ? A firm reliance on Divine 
guidance and support, and a thorough conviction of the 
goodness of his cause. "What am I," he has exclaimed, 
"that I should be counted worthy to suffer shame for his 
name ? " He knew well upon what ground he had planted 

10 



110 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



his foot. If he was in the wrong, then were pur ancestors 
in the wrong in legalizing the profession of the true reli- 
gion ; they were in the wrong in passing laws in its favor; 
they were in the wrong in protecting the Sabbath ; they 
were in the wrong in repressing gross violations of the 
first table of the law ; they were in the' wrong in all their 
solemn contracts, — in the covenants by which the Refor- 
mation, at both its periods, was confirmed ; they were in 
the wrong in recognizing religion in the education of 
youth, in the administration of oaths, and in the admission 
to all places of power and trust. A question involving 
points of such mighty importance might seem merely 
metaphysical to others, but not so to him. He contended 
for what he deemed a great practical principle, which was 
in all time to aflfect the destinies of the British empire. 
He held, too, that the principle to which it was opposed — 
that of the Voluntary — was incapable of defence, except 
on grounds inconsistent with a belief in divine revelation; 
that indirectly but infallibly it led to infidelity; and, look- 
ing far into the future, he could discern through the 
gloom, impenetrable to other eyes, the field of the coming 
warfare thronged with dim shapes of terror — with the 
threatening fiices and fiery arms of the yet unawakened, 
perhaps unborn, combatants. Nor were there more mel- 
ancholy moments wanting, when he saw amid the darkness 
the fall of age-hallowed institutions, and the short-lived, 
but for the time complete, eclipse of religion itself. In 
referring in after years to this period of suffering and trial, 
he ever spoke of his opponents in a subdued and placid 
spirit. "Well," said he one morning to a friend, "there's 
a man dead who took the trouble of coming eighty miles 
to depose me from the ministry. I am sure I have had 
no resentment toward him. No doubt he did what he 
considered it his duty to do. Yet it was hard, with a wife 
and family, to be thrown upon the world." 



DR. THOMAS M'CEIE. 



Ill 



ARTICLE THIRD. 

The Court of Session decided that Thomas M'Crie, and 
the portion of his congregation which continued to hold 
by him, had forfeited all right to their chapel. There 
could not be a clearer case. They were found guilty of 
adherence to the old standards; they had obstinately 
refused to alter the Confession of Faith ; they had con- 
tinued to cling to the original Testimony ; they had even 
gone so far as to assert that magistrates, as such, have 
religious duties to perform ; and it was but strict justice, 
therefore, that they should lose their chapel. The case 
was decided against them in March, 1809, and the decision 
has no doubt been carefully registered among the archives 
of the court as a valuable precedent. The poor people 
who suffered by it were not numerous, and we use the 
right phrase when we say that they were poor ; and so, 
in providing their deposed and excommunicated minister 
with another chapel, they had just to content themselves 
with an obscure building, that lay hid among old and black- 
ened tenements at the foot of Carrubber's Close. Rarely 
has there been a preacher or congregation less generally 
known. ' ; There now," said the late Dr. Andrew Thomson 
to a friend, after listening, at a subsequent period, to one 
of Dr. M'Crie's discourses, — " There now is something far 
beyond the compass of any minister in our Establishment." 
What would have been thought of the man who would 
have said as much in the year 1810 of the deposed minister 
who preached in Carrubber's Close? 

During this period of obscurity he was silently employed 
on his first great work — the "'Life of Knox." He had 
been engaged in storing up materials of thought from even 
his earliest boyhood ; and for at least the last seven years 
he had been contributing largely to the "Christian Maga- 
zine," a religious periodical edited by one of his friends. 
But "can any good come out of Galilee?" No one 
looked for powerful writing and profound research in the 



112 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



humble -pages of a Secession Magazine ; nor was it discov- 
ered by more than a few friends, as obscure as himself, that 
his " Sketches of the Reformation in Spain," or his biogra- 
phies of French and Scotch ministers of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, were fraught with interesting infor- 
mation, pleasingly conveyed, and which no other writer 
of the age could communicate. " It is pleasing," says 
Johnson, " to see great works in their seminal state, preg- 
nant with latent possibilities of excellence." In some of 
these earlier pieces may be found the unexpanded germ of 
the "Life of Knox;" and as early as the year 1803 he had 
struck out his plan — never, alas ! fully completed — of 
writing the history of the Church of Scotland in a series 
of biographies. But the more immediate cause of his 
undertaking was unquestionably his recent controversy. 
The pillar of history is sagaciously placed by Bunyan in 
the immediate neighborhood of the den of Giant Pope ; 
and fain, he tells us, would the giant deface its inscrip- 
tions, were it not carefully guarded. The historian felt 
how necessary it was to erect a similar pillar among the 
people of Scotland — a pillar which none of the enemies 
of the Church, whether they sheltered under a pretended 
liberalism, like the men who had cast him out of their 
communion, or accomplished similar ends by opposite 
means, and under a different profession, would be able to 
obliterate or pull down. He had thoroughly satisfied 
himself that the system of doctrine and discipline intro- 
duced by our first "Reformers and Confessors" was not 
more consonant to the oracles of truth than conducive to 
the best interests, temporal and spiritual, of the nation. 
He had set himself, therefore, minutely to study their 
history; — to use his own striking language, "then the fire 
began to burn : " nor could he forbear imparting to others 
what he himself had felt so strongly. But his feeling of 
admiration was not for the men,- — they were all deceased, 
and had rendered in their accounts, — but for the grace 
and gifts with which God had endowed them, and for the 



DR. THOMAS M 5 CRIE. 



113 



fabric which they had been honored to rear. Late in 
.the year 1811 his "Life of Knox" was submitted to the 
public. 

There is much interest in marking the first reception of 
work's of great genius, destined powerfully to influence 
public opinion, and to become the heir-looms of civilized 
man in all after ages; — to see them at times painfully 
fctruffgling with neglect, at times well-niffh borne down 
by the malignancy of envious opposition, — now contend- 
ing with some blind prejudice, now with some selfish 
interest, — awhile repressed by the severity of vulgar and 
undiscerning criticism, awhile by the conventionalities of 
some artificial, but, for the time, established mode; and 
then to mark them rising variously, but invariably, to their 
proper place, — in some instances by a slow and gradual 
process, in others suddenly and at once, through the 
influence of happy accidents. Cowper was told by one of 
his first reviewers that he might be a very honest man, 
but most assuredly he was no poet; and poorKirke White 
was, represented as a beggar, who had made a worthless 
book a pretence for gathering money. The "Life of 
Knox" was destined to no long probation, for it soon fell 
under the notice of very superior men. Shortly after its 
publication, the author's old favorite professor, Dugald 
Stewart, — certainly the most eloquent, if not the most 
profound, of all our Scottish metaphysicians, — w r as con- 
fined one Sunday to the house by a slight indisposition. 
All the family were at church except his man-servant, an 
old and faithful attendant; and the Professor, on some 
occasion which required his services, summoned him by 
the bell. To his surprise, however, the careful domestic 
did not appear, and the bell was rung again and again, but 
. with no better effect. The Professor then stepped down 
stairs to see what could have possibly befallen John, and 
threw open the door of the old man's apartment. And 
there, sure enough, was John, leaning over a little table, 
and engrossed heart and soul in the perusal of a book, as 

10* 



114 



DR. THOMAS M'CEIE. 



unconscious of the presence of his master as he had been 
an instant before of the ringing of the bell. The Profes- 
sor's curiosity was aroused ; — literature was rather a new 
pursuit to John ; — and, shaking him by the shoulder, he 
inquired what book it was that had so wonderfully capti- 
vated his fancy. "Why, sir," said John, "it 's a book that 
my minister has written, and really it's a grand ane." 
The Professor brought it with him to his room, to try 
what he could make of John's minister's book; and, when 
once fairly engaged, found it as impossible to withdraw 
himself from it as John himself had. He finished it at 
a sitting, and waited next day on the author to express 
the admiration he entertained for his performance. The 
Doctor bowed to the praises of his old Professor with the 
modesty of real genius, and replied in one of those happy 
compliments which show the elegant and delicate mind, 
" JPidchrum est laudari a laudato" — " It is delightful to 
be praised by one who has himself gained the applauses of 
mankind." 

The " Edinburgh Review" — at this period bevond 
comparison the most powerful periodical in Europe — 
took up the biography of Knox in the same spirit with 
Dugald Stewart. An air of surprise and admiration so 
thoroughly pervades the able article in which the work is 
reviewed, that it seems to constitute a part of its very 
style, and certainly a very refreshing part of it. M'Kenzie 
has been praised for the shrewdness he evinced in at once 
placing Burns among the great masters of undying song, 
at a period when at least nine-tenths of his contemporaries 
thought of him as merely a clever ploughman, who made 
very passable vei&es, considering that he was but an un- 
taught man. Lord Jeffrey was equally happy in marking 
out the proper place of M'Crie. He at once characterized 
his work as one which united opposite qualities of excel- 
lence, and as by far the best piece of history which had 
appeared since the commencement of the reviewer's criti- 
cal career, — as accurate, learned, and concise, and yet not 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



115 



the less full of spirit and animation ; as a rare union of 
patient research and sober judgment, with boldness of 
thinking and force of imagination. Nothing had he ever 
read on the subject, he said, which had afforded him so 
much amusement and so much instruction ; and yet this 
noble production was the work of an author of whose very 
existence, though residing in the same city with himself, 
he had never heard before. The Quarterly Reviewers, in 
spite of their Episcopacy, said well-nigh as much. With 
them, as with their contemporary, "Dr. M'Crie was really 
a great biographer." Compact, precise, discriminating, 
simple, vigorous, profound in his researches, and candid in 
his statements, he told the story of a" hero as a hero would 
wish to have it told. Neither Luther nor Calvin, they 
said, had found a biographer like the present : and yet, 
true it was that his principles were bad. He held by the 
reformers in all their extremes ; and had he been born in 
the sixteenth century, "less," they were persuaded, " would 
have been heard of Rowe or Willox as auxiliaries of Knox 
than of M'Crie." We believe they were perfectly in the 
right, and yet think none the worse of the Doctor. 

He rose at once into eminence. The University of 
Edinburgh honored itself by conferring upon him his 
degree, the first ever extended in Scotland to a dissenting 
clergyman. His work was translated into the French, 
Dutch, and German languages, and spread extensively oyer 
the continent. History assumed a new tone when it spoke 
of the deeds and the character of Knox ; monuments were 
erected and clubs instituted to his memory; candid and 
honorable men, of all persuasions, filled the periodicals of 
the time with their recantations of the error into which 
they had fallen regarding his character; and the powerful 
and manly reasonings and well-attested facts of his biog- 
rapher were only met by the contemptible puerilities and 
garbled misstatements of a few embryo Puseyites, and at 
an after period by the denunciations of the Court of Rome. 
In the list of those peculiarly dangerous writings, among 



116 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



which the Bible stands preeminent, the infallible church 
has placed at least one of the productions of Dr. M'Crie, 
■ — by far the highest compliment which he has yet received. 
But the effect of a personal nature resulting from his sud- 
den celebrity, which the Doctor himself probably valued 
most, was the degree of friendship and esteem which it 
secured to him from kindred spirits. Dr. Andrew Thom- 
son — whose star, of, alas! brief but matchless brilliancy, 
had at that time just risen above the horizon — found him 
out; and a friendship, based on mutual admiration and 
respect, was formed between these two great and good 
men, whose duration, it is probable, is not to be measured 
by periods of time. Except on one unhappy occasion, 
they stood side by side in all their after controversies, 
employing somewhat dissimilar weapons, but fighting 
under the same shield. Was the historian assailed by the 
Episcopalian critics of our own country or of the south? 

— a discharge of merciless ridicule and resistless argument 
from his friend the Churchman prostrated the assailants. 
Did his friend the Churchman refuse opening St. George's 
at the bidding of the state, just because he held that 
the Church of Scotland was not an Erastian church ? 

— out stepped the historian in his defence, and opposition 
sunk overawed. They were often together, and the happy 
temper of both, added to the rich humor of Dr. Thomson, 
threw an air of peculiar cheerfulness over their intercourse. 
There is a sunshiny freshness in the few notes which have 
been preserved of the many that passed between them ; 
and when at any time the frequent and hearty laugh was 
heard proceeding from the historian's study, all the house- 
hold at once concluded that Dr. Andrew Thomson was 
there. The Doctor was more than half a phrenologist, 
and used at times to try whether he could not accommo- 
date the cranial development of his friend the historian to 
the well-known powers of his mind. In some respects he 
was singularly unlucky, and his blunders seem to have 
furnished large occasion of mirth. The Doctor flattered 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



117 



himself on one occasion that he had discovered a large 
development of the organ of music on the corners of his 
friend's forehead, and when he had fully assured himself of 
the fact, his friend quietly informed him that the accom- 
panying musical ear was, notwithstanding, particularly dull, 
and that one of the most arduous tasks which he had ever 
seen accomplished was the task undertaken by one of his 
acquaintances, an old weaver, who had set himself to beat 
into his head the familiar tune of St. PauTs. We find 
humorous allusions to the new science in some of Dr. 
AT (Trie's notes referring to contributions for the " Christian 
Instructor." "You are prodigiously moderate," he says, 
"in your expectations, when you look for two reviews from 
me in one month. You imagine, I suppose, that my brain 
is as large and as fertile as your, own, — a mistake which 
you might have avoided without the assistance of Dr. 
Spurzheim." The two champions stood, as we have said, 
side by side, the unflinching opponents of slavery in the 
colonies and of patronage in the Church, — of the super- 
stition that would debase religion, and of the infidelity 
that would overturn it, — of the hirelings of Moderatism, 
the wild visionaries of Roweism, and the incendiaries of 
Voluntaryism, — till the younger champion dropped, and 
died, we may well say, in his harness, cut down in his mid 
career of usefulness, " when best employed and Avanted 
most." Deeply was the survivor affected ; and many of 
those who on the succeeding Sabbath heard him give vent 
to his feelings in a sudden and impassioned burst, have not 
yet forgotten what the passage conveyed, and never will. 
"Brethren, pray for us, and let your first and last petition 
be humility. Once, yea twice, has a voice cried to the 
ministers of this city, and again, since we last met, it hath 
cried with the sound of a trumpet. 'All flesh is grass, and 
all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field!' 
The time has not come at which ceremony permits the 
dead to be spoken of in public. But I hasten to say the 
little which I have to say, especially as it is not in the way 



118 



DE. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



of eulogy. Others will praise him : as for me, I can only 
deplore him. And my deploration shall not turn on the 
splendid talents with which his Master adorned him, — 
the vigor of his understanding, the grasp of his intellect, or 
the unrivalled force of his masculine eloquence; but on his 
honest, firm, unflinching, fearless independence of mind, — a 
quality eminently required in the present time, — in which, 
I may say, he was single among his fellows, and which 
claimed for him respect as well as forbearance, even when 
it betrayed its possessor into excess." We are reminded 
strongly by this truly eloquent passage of a passage which 
has been long regarded as one of the most powerful in 
English literature, — the concluding part of the last chap- 
ter of Sir Walter Raleigh's « History of the World : " 
" O earth, earth, earth ! Jhou art the true proprietor and 
lord paramount of all that is here below. Thou givest 
forth nothing but what thou receivest again, and thou 
receivest thine own with usury. Grass, herbs, trees, plants, 
houses, metals base and precious, and man himself, who 
hath rifled thee of all these, and who tears thy bosom and 
digs into thy bowels, and, measuring thy length and thy 
breadth, proudly walks over thee as if he were more than 
dust, — all shall return to thee, and find a grave in the 
womb from which they sprang." 



ARTICLE FOURTH. 



Dr. Johnson has occupied a whole paper of the "Idler" 
in showing that the biographies of authors may be as rich 
in interest as the biographies of any class of persons what- 
ever. No lives, he remarks, more abound in sudden vicis- 
situdes of fortune, and over no class of men do hope and 
fear, expectation and disappointment, grief and joy, exer- 
cise a larger influence. Goldsmith, in his Life of Parnell, 
has recorded an opposite opinion; but Goldsmith did not 
sufficiently attend to his own history — a history quite as 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



119 



striking in its details as any piece of fiction, not excepting 
even his own exquisite " Vicar of Wakefield." The obscure 
surgeon-assistant, whom the faculty were afraid to employ 
because his brogue was so strong and his appearance so 
uncouth ; the imprudent and ruined surety, who, forsak- 
ing his obscure little shop in a provincial town, fled from 
his creditors to avoid a jail ; the poor scholar and itiner- 
ant musician, who wandered on foot over France, Belgium, 
and Italy, purchasing a supper and a bed with his tunes 
from the peasantry, and disputing on some philosophical 
question for the same meed and a piece of money addi- 
tional with the learned of Ferrara and Padua, — was the 
elegant and accomplished author whose poetry, a few years 
after, was to be rated higher than that of Pope, and his prose 
superior to that of Addison. Dr. Johnson was so much in 
the right, that, to establish the point, one has but to appeal 
from the opinion of his opponent to his opponent's biogra- 
phy. We have already passed, in our rapid sketch, over 
that part of the life of Dr. M'Crie most marked by vicis- 
situde. The novelist or the poet takes but a portion of 
individual or national history for his subject; — the curtain 
falls, or the tale closes, when the hero of the piece has 
passed from one extreme of fortune to another ; even the 
boy hears no more of Whittington after he has become 
Lord Mayor of London, or of Pepin after he has become 
King of France. On the same principle, what may be 
termed the romance of the Doctor's life closes when the 
obscure and persecuted preacher of Carrubber's Close, 
known only, beyond the narrow circle of his friends, when 
known at all, as a narrow-minded and illiberal sectarian, 
takes his undisputed place among the literati of his coun- 
try as beyond comparison the first historian of his age, — 
as a great master of public opinion, — as successful above 
all his contemporaries in removing long-cherished prejudice 
and misconception, and as singularly sagacious in seizing 
the events of the remote future in the imperfect and 
embryo rudiments of present occurrences, or in partially 



120 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



developed modes of feeling and thought. But in the por- 
tion of his history which remains, though little checkered 
by incident, there is interest of a different kind. It is 
something to know the part taken by such a man in the 
controversies of the time — controversies many of which 
still survive; for there w T ere few judgments less liable to 
mistake, and no honest man ever questioned his integrity. 

Dr. M'Crie was very much of the opinion of Cowley. 
Good men, says the prince of metaphysical poets, should 
pray not less frequently for the conversion of literature 
than for the Jews. No one better knew the importance 
of literature, or was more earnestly solicitous for its con- 
version, than the Doctor. He saw every species of power 
among men, whether for good or evil, founded in opinion; 
and recognized in the press an all-potent lever, through 
which the public mind may be either heightened or de- 
pressed. He was aware, too, that it is not always the grave 
or more elaborate works which produce the deepest impres- 
sions. Songs have hastened national revolutions, and a 
single romance has powerfully affected the character of a 
country ; and in the first series of the " Tales of my Land- 
lord," with its marvellously unfair representation of the 
Covenanters, he recognized a work of the most influential 
character, and influential chiefly for evil. Rarely, says the 
poet, has Spain had heroes since Cervantes laughed away 
the chivalry of his country ; and it was a class beyond 
comparison nobler and better than the chivalry of Spain 
that the novelist had set himself to laugh down. Dr. 
M'Crie's review of the "Tales" appeared in the "Christian 
Instructor" for 1817, and produced a powerful impression. 
Sir Walter, secure in his strength, had felt for years befora 
that he could well afford being indifferent to criticism. He 
had a firmer hold of the public mind than any of his ret iew- 
ers ; the occasional critique either reechoed his praises in 
tones caught from the general voice, and then sank unheeded, 
or dared to dispute the justice of the almost universal deci- 
sion in his favor and sank all the sooner in consequence. So 



DE. THOMAS M'CRIE. 121 

far was he from deeming the strictures of a hostile reviewer 
worthy of reply, that he had ceased to deem them worthy 
of perusal. On this occasion, however, he found he had 
to deal with no ordinary critic ; the stream of public opin- 
ion had been turned fairly against him ; and, after record- 
ing his determination not even to read the Doctor's article, 
he eventually found it necessary not only to read, but also 
to attempt answering it, which he did in the " Quarterly," 
in the form of a critique on his own work. Hogg has 
informed us how invariably favorable Sir Walter as a critic 
was to Sir Walter as an author. He, of course, decided 
that his "Tales" were very excellent tales, and that the 
Covenanters were in no degree better than he had described 
them ; referring for proof to a few insulated facts as valu- 
able in proving general propositions, as if it were to be 
inferred from the history of the Rev. Titus Oates that all 
the clergy of England were perjured miscreants, or from 
that of the Rev. Dr. Dodd that they were all malefactors, 
and* deserved to be hung. His article had its weight with 
a few High Churchmen, zealously prepared to believe on 
the side of Claverhouse without the trouble of thought or 
scrutiny; but in the estimate of the less prejudiced classes, 
both in England and our own country, victory remained 
as unequivocally on the side of Dr. M'Crie and the Cov- 
enanters as if the reply had never been written. 

The "Life of Andrew Melville" appeared about two 
years after, in 1819. It maybe regarded as a continuation 
of the history of the Scottish Church, so auspiciously begun 
in the " Life of Knox," and displays the same power and 
discrimination exhibited in that work, with even more than 
the same amazing profundity of research. It was remarked, 
it is said, by the present Lord Jeffrey, that one would re- 
quire several years' additional reading to qualify one's self 
for the task of reviewing it. The Doctor had got into a 
walk of information, the intricacies of which were known to 
only himself ; and critics of the highest class were content 
to set their craft aside, and, taking the place of ordinary 

11 



122 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 

readers under him, were fain, instead of leading others 
to be followers themselves. Regarded simply as a piece 
of narrative, it has been found to possess less interest than 
the "Life of Knox." The writer has not performed his 
part less ably; but the subject of his memoir, if not less a 
hero than his great predecessor, the reformer, had lived a 
life of less stormy interest, and had found feebler, if not 
less insidious spirits, with which to contend. But the his- 
tory of Melville will ever continue, notwithstanding, to be 
regarded as emphatically the history of the Scottish Church 
for the stirring and eventful period which it embraces. 
The High Churchmen of the "British Critic" were less 
candid and less knowing than the editor of the " Edin- 
burgh Review ; " and, making their own ignorance the 
measure of their censure, they were of course very severe. 
Authorities of which they knew nothing might be garbled 
and misquoted, they said, without their being aware of the 
fact ; and it could not be held, therefore, that the " bold, 
rebellious fanatics who figured prominently in the early 
days of the Scottish Reformation" could be in reality the 
good, honest men which the Presbyterian historian had 
proved them to be. The argument seems unanswerable : 
and as ignorance in one set of men is quite as good as 
ignorance in any other set, there can be no faith in history 
so long as the Churchmen of the " British Critic," or any 
other sort of people, remain unacquainted with the data on 
which the historians have founded. 

The Doctor rarely took any part in public meetings. 
Though an eloquent and impressive speaker, and at once 
qualified to delight by the manner and instruct by the 
matter of his addresses, his native modesty led him to rate 
his capabilities for the platform lower than every one else 
rated them. He felt, too, that he was not neglecting his 
duty so long as he was engaged in his own peculiar walk, 
— the walk in which he excelled all his contemporaries, — 
and so long as he saw every public measure in which he 
felt an interest furnished with its zealous and appropriate 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



123 



champions. His friend Andrew Thomson was the power- 
ful assailant of the Apocrypha and the slave-trade ; and 
the cause of the Scottish poor might well be entrusted to 
Dr. Chalmers. There were questions and causes, however, 
for which he could deem it a duty to mount the platform. 
Many of our readers will remember the apathy with which 
a large proportion of the British public regarded the long, 
protracted, and bloody struggle of the Greeks with their 
cruel and tyrannical taskmasters. The country had grown 
too mercantile to be generous ; the interests of some of our 
trading bodies were compromised ; it had become impru- 
dent to be sympathetic. The Greeks had grown too base 
and degraded, it was affirmed, to be either deserving of 
freedom or capable of enjoying it; and so they were left 
to fight more than half the battle of liberty, not only with- 
out assistance, but without sympathy. But the Doctor 
indulged in other feelings, and reasoned on other princi- 
ples. He could sympathize with the oppressed Greeks, not 
only as a scholar, richly imbued with the spirit of the 
ancient literature of their country, but also as a Christian, 
deeply interested in their welfare as men; nor had he 
learned, in the prosecution of his studies, to deem the strug- 
gles of even a semi-barbarous people as of little impor- 
tance. The accident which befalls an individual in his 
immature childhood frequently influences his destiny for 
life ; and it is so also with countries. The Irish were, not 
• a civilized people when conquered by the English under 
Strongbow, nor yet the Scotch when they baffled and 
defeated the same enemy under Cressingham and Edward 
II. ; but who can doubt that the present state of Scotland 
and Ireland depends materially upon the very opposite 
results of their respective struggles? At the first meeting 
held in behalf of the Greeks in Scotland, — we believe 
in Britain, — Dr. M'Crie took the lead, and delivered an 
address of great eloquence and power, which had much 
the effect of exciting the public interest, and which united 
what is not often conjoined — a manner singularly popular 



124 



DR. THOMAS M'cRIE. 



and pleasing, with much, profundity of thought, and infor- 
mation drawn from the less accessible sources. At an 
after period, when the struggle had terminated in the free- 
dom of Greece, the ladies of Edinburgh exerted themselves 
in raising funds, through which it was proposed to extend 
the advantages of education to the long-neglected females 
of that country. The Doctor gave the scheme his warmest 
support; he preached in its behalf the sermon so highly 
eulogized by Andrew Thomson as something beyond the 
reach of his contemporary ministers of the Establishment, 
conducted the correspondence of the Association origi- 
nated to carry it on, and at a public meeting appealed 
to the country in its favor. Some of the ladies, his coad- 
jutors in the scheme, had conceived of the Doctor merely 
as a person of one talent — one of the most common con- 
ceptions imaginable ; they had no idea that the man who 
excelled all his contemporaries in research could excel 
most of them in eloquence also. They knew that no one 
could surpass him in argument or narrative, and therefore 
for argument and narrative they looked to him; but to 
delight the meeting with the poetry of the subject, to 
recall the old classic associations, to appeal powerfully to 
the feelings, ■ — to do all they supposed the Doctor was not 
capable of doing, — they secured the services of the late 
Sir James Mackintosh. One of them even went so far as 
to tell the Doctor of their arrangement, in which he readily 
acquiesced. When the meeting came, however, they were 
all convincingly shown that he could do more than argue 
and narrate. " His address," says a writer in an English 
periodical, "distinguished throughout by the most thorough 
acquaintance with the politics, philosophy, mythology, and 
poetry of ancient Greece, commingled with the happiest 
allusions to these so fervid a contrast of her ancient glory 
with her modern degradation, that, new and foreign as 
such topics were thought to be to the habits of the good 
Doctor, his speech reminded many of his hearers of the 
finest speeches of Burke." 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



125 



The year 1827 was what we would have termed a year 
of triumph to Dr. M'Crie, had the conscientious stand for 
what he deemed a great principle, which had subjected 
him to so much persecution rather more than twenty years 
before, borne any reference to the opinion or the approval 
of men. He had stood with his few brethren on the ground 
occupied by the fathers of the Secession and the first 
reformers of the Church, and had seen well-nigh the entire 
body to whom he had been united, but who had cast him 
off, carried away on a new and untried course of peril and 
defection, which would terminate, he augured, in the 
wreck of all those principles for which their fathers had so 
zealously contended. The body, however, had contained 
many excellent men, who, less sagacious than the Doctor, 
were yet not less attached to the original principles of the 
Secession, and who had been led from off the ground occu- 
pied by the first reformers, merely in the hope of reforming 
a little further. But the experience of twenty years had 
sufficed to teach them that their liberalism had led them 
astray. About seven years before, on the union of the 
Burgher and Antiburgher synods, a considerable body 
of this class, thoroughly convinced that the Secession was 
drifting from its original moorings, had formed themselves # 
into a separate synod ; and now in this year, finding that 
they were contending for the same grand truths with the 
Doctor and his brethren, they again entered, through 
mutual agreement, into communion with them, and were 
reunited, as of old, into one body. They virtually con- 
fessed that the excommunicated and deposed minority had 
occupied all along the true position — a position to which 
they themselves now deemed it necessary to return. Such 
are some of the honors reserved for the men who, through 
good and evil report, steadily adhere to the truth. With 
a magnanimity, however, natural to his character, Dr. 
M'Crie " steadily refused," says his biographer, " either to 
exact or receive from his former associates any acknowl- 
edgment of the illegality or severity of the sentences passed 

H* 



126 



DR. THOMAS m'cME. 



by the General Synod against himself or his brethren. The 
honor of the truth was all that he cared to vindicate ; his 
own he left in the hands of his Divine Master." 



ARTICLE FIFTH. 

Two of the later literary works of Dr. M'Crie bear in 
history such a relation to his two earlier productions, the 
Lives of Melville and Knox, as, in the drama, tragedy bears 
to comedy. A cloud of disaster darkened the closing scene 
of the life of Melville, but the existence of the Scottish 
Church in the present day shows that he did not dare and 
suffer in vain. The cloud was a temporary one. The seed 
which he had sown lay dormant for a while, but it ultimately 
sprang up and bore fruit abundantly. The biographies of 
Melville and Knox constitute, therefore, the history of a 
successful reformation ; his later works — the Sketches 
of the Reformation in Spain and Italy — form the his- 
tories of unsuccessful ones. The beacon-light was kindled 
but to be extinguished; the seed was sown but to die. 
Both works read an important lesson, and both are probably 
destined to produce important effects, in the future, in the 
countries to which they relate. The " History of the Ref- 
ormation in Italy " has been translated into the Dutch, 
French, and German languages; and in the fear, doubtless, 
of its being translated into the Italian also, the Court of 
Rome has done it the honor of inserting it in the "Index 
Expurgatorius," as a work peculiarly obnoxious. The 
"History of the Reformation in Spain" has lately been 
translated into German. Both works are acquiring a con- 
tinental celebrity; and when the time shall come — and it 
may not now be very distant — when, according to Mil- 
ton, the "blood and ashes" sown over the fields "where 
still doth sway the triple tyrant," shall begin to bear fruit, 
the faithful record of the fierce and relentless hatred of 
the persecutor, and of the sufferings unflinchingly endured 



DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 



127 



and the deaths joyfully welcomed for the truth's^ sake by 
his oppressed victims, may -exert no little influence in 
hastening the fall of the one and leading to an imitation 
of the other. 

The Doctor was employed in pursuing his researches, 
adding instance to instance of the cruelty and perfidy of 
Popery, and accumulating proof upon proof that its atroci- 
ties have not been restricted to one country or confined 
to one age, when the "bill for admitting Roman Catholics 
into places of power and trust was introduced by the gov- 
ernment. In the preceding year he had taken an active 
interest in petitioning for the abolition of the Test and 
Corporation acts. He was too shrewd not to recognize 
the measure as merely a preparatory one, and which could 
not fail to terminate in Catholic emancipation. But he 
was not one of the class who can withhold from doing 
what is right in itself because something not so right may 
follow. He believed, with Cowper, that these acts involved 
a gross profanation of things sacred ; that they converted 
the symbols of "redeeming grace" into mere "picklocks," 
through which the unscrupulous entered into office, but 
by which the conscientious were excluded; and hence the 
zeal with which he urged their abolition. He now took as 
active a part, and on quite the same principle, in opposing 
the emancipation of the Catholics. He advocated the pre- 
liminary measure because he deemed it essentially right, 
and denounced and opposed the measure to which it had 
led as radically wrong, — as a measure, too, to be dreaded 
and deprecated in its effects as one of the most ruinous of 
modern legislation. He was convinced, he said, that the 
ministry of the day would succeed in carrying their object; 
such seemed to be the intention of Providence in permit- 
ting the union of parties hitherto opposed, and in suffering 
even "our prophets" to be carried away by a spirit of 
delusion ; but he felt it necessary to do all he could in the 
matter, by way of personal exoneration ; he felt opposi- 
tion, however fruitless, to be his duty. " We have been 



128 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 




I," he ^5 5 ," W a high 



quarter," to avoid such subjects, 



unless we wish to^^Mll4kr*^[ie^flames of Smithfield, now 
long forgotten. Long forgotten! where forgotten? In 
heaven ? No. In Britain ? God forbid. They may be for- 
gotten at St. Stephen's or Westminster Abbey, but they 
are not forgotten in Britain. And if ever such a day 
arrives, the hours of Britain's prosperity have been num- 
bered." A petition to the Legislature against the Catholic 
claims, which, whatever might be thought of its object, 
could not be regarded as other than a document of extra- 
ordinary ability, was drawn up by Dr. M'Crie, and received 
the signatures of rather more than thirteen thousand per- 
sons. We are ill qualified to decide on the part taken 
on this occasion by the Doctor. There were very excel- 
lent and very sagacious men — men little moved by the 
arguments of mere expediency — who exerted themselves 
on the opposite side ; nor was it easy to see what other 
course remained for our legislators, in the peculiar circum- 
stances of the country, than the course which they adopted. 
The Catholics seemed prepared for a civil war, and at least 
nine-tenths of our Protestants were determined not to 
fight in such a quarrel: We would not have signed Dr. 
M'Crie's petition at the time ; had an opportunity occurred, 
we would have readily appended our signature to the list 
which contained the names of Thomson and of Chalmers. 
Eleven years, however, have since passed: the government 
of Ireland is well-nigh as great a problem now as it was 
then ; the struggle between Protestantism and Popery still 
continues, with this difference, that the advantage is now 
more on the side of the enemy, without his being in any 
degree less bitter in his enmity ; the power of the priest 
is nothing lessened ; the success of the missionary or the 
triumph of the Bible is nothing increased. We are afraid, 
in short, that the part taken by the Doctor did not run so 
counter to his profound sagacity in such matters as at one 
time we might possibly have thought ; nay, more, we are 
somewhat afraid that events are in the course of showing 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



129 



it did not run counter to it at all. As little, however, can 
we avoid feeling that, should the worst come to the worst, 
Protestantism on its "present ground would have at least a 
clearer, if not a better quarrel than on its former post of 
advantage ; and that if Popery, unlike an ancient wrestler, 
could not have contended with most success when beneath 
its opponent, it would at least have to contend with an 
opposition less hearty, and encouraged by a sympathy 
deeper and more general. 

Three years after, Dr. M'Crie again deemed it his duty 
to come publicly forward and record his conscientious dis- 
approval of another political measure, — the Irish Educa- 
tional scheme, with its carefully culled scriptural lesson- 
book. His estimate of the statesmanship of the present 
day was far from high ; but it was not an estimate that any 
one party would choose to quote with the view of better- 
ing their own character at the expense of that of the party 
opposed to them. Nor was it much more favorable to the 
people than to the people's rulers ; for, though the Doctor 
loved, he could not flatter them. " It has been my opinion 
fixedly for some time," he remarks, in a letter to a friend, 
" that any administration to be formed at present, whig 
or tory, would sacrifice religion on the shrine of political 
expediency; and 'my people,' provided their temporary 
and worldly views w r ere gratified, would ' love to have it 
so.' This is my political creed." He held that the scheme 
which he opposed involved a principle on which the very 
foundations of Protestantism rested ; and that it was 
taking a view of the subject radically false to regard the 
book of selected extracts in the same light with collections 
of passages drawn up for purposes of mere economy ; seeing 
that these extracts were confessedly made to conciliate the 
prejudices of a class who deny the right of the laity to the 
use of the whole Bible. We are not unacquainted with 
the arguments which have been urged on the opposite side, 
and they are at least plausible. We have little doubt, 
however, that ultimately it will be found that the Doctor 



130 



DR. THOMAS M'CME. 



was in the right ; and we are inclined to think that by 
placing the question, through a slight alteration of the 
temTy7 more -in a secular light, Jke ■soundness of his views 
would be more geae7aTTy~rocognized. Suppose the entire 
Scriptures consisted of the decalogue alone ; that a sound 
criticism had proved, as it has proved, the integrity of 
every one of the ten commandments which compose it, 
and that all Protectants were thoroughly convinced of 
their Divine origin ; suppose that Popery treated four of 
the ten in exactly the way in which it sometimes treats 
one of the ten, — that it had not only struck out the Divine 
prohibition of idolatry, but the prohibition also against 
theft, murder, and adultery, — would any government, five- 
sixths of which were Protestants, so much as dream of 
forming an educational scheme for both Protestants and 
Papists, through which, out of respect to the prejudices 
of the latter, only six of the commandments — the per- 
mitted six — would be taught ? And yet, either the Bible, 
as a whole, is no revelation, addressed, as it is to the peo- 
ple as a body, not to any particular class of functionaries, 
or the same rule must apply to it too. Or, again, suppose 
that Popery, instead of forbidding the perusal of the whole 
Scriptures, forbade the acquirement of the art of reading 
altogether, leaving the other branches of education open, 
such as arithmetic, drawing, and the mathematics, — would 
a liberal government once think of closing with it on such 
terms, or exclude reading from its schools, in deference to 
a prejudice so illiberal? And if a prejudice against secu- 
lar knowledge is to be overborne and denounced, why 
respect a prejudice against religious knowledge ? But our 
limits, and the character of our sketch, forbid an examina- 
tion of the question ; and we refer the reader to the pow- 
erful and eloquent speech of the Doctor on the subject, 
appended to his biography. He was no way appalled at 
finding^ himself standing in a slender minority; he had 
been in the minority, he said, all his life long; and the 
truth has often shared the same fate with Dr. M'Crie. On 



DR. THOMAS M'cRIE. 



131 



an attempt being made to disturb the meeting, of that low 
and disreputable character so often resorted to on similar 
occasions, and in which brute noise is brought to bear 
against argument, — the mere animal against the moral 
and rational agent, — the Doctor stepped forward, and told 
the disturbers, with much emphasis, to " recollect that they 
had to do with men, and with men who were not accus- 
tomed to be browbeat." His spirit rose with opposition, 
and kindled at every show of oppression and injustice ; 
and though the shouts and bellowings of a score or two 
of Liberals, determined to tolerate only the principles of 
their own party, might drown his voice, just as the kettle- 
drums of Dalyell and Claverhouse drowned the voices of 
the Covenanters in their scaffold addresses, no one could 
better exert the influence of that moral force before which 
all such brute violence must ultimately quail. 

The Voluntary controversy, in which he had entered so 
early, had become what he had predicted — an all-impor- 
tant conflict, recognized by every one as of the first im- 
portance. Men of some religion and men of none had 
made common cause, though with a different object, — the 
one against church establishments, the other against Chris- 
tianity itself; and the Doctor could now look forward to a 
time when the better materials of the combination would 
be reduced to well-nigh the level of the worst, and the 
religious degradation of the men from whom he had parted 
compauy more than twenty years before would be rendered 
apparent to all. It was one of his first principles, " that 
society is a corporate body, and has rights and duties of 
the same kind as those of the individual;" nor could he 
believe, therefore, in his thorough conviction of the im- 
portance of religion, that religion would hold other than 
the first place among national concerns. Still, his antici- 
pations were gloomy when he thought of the Establish- 
ment. Though persuaded, as we have already said, that 
"the Voluntary principle was not only untenable, but 
incapable of defence, except on grounds inconsistent with a 



132 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIB. 



belief in Divine revelation, and directly but infallibly lead- 
ing to infidelity," no man could see better how much of 
abuse and corruption had crept into our national Church, 
and how strenuously every measure of reform would be 
resisted through the blind and suicidal selfishness of her 
professed but hollow friends, and the hostility of her clearer- 
sighted enemies. He often anticipated, therefore, a dis- 
astrous result of the controversy, and a season of general 
suffering and perturbation, in which all classes would be 
fearfully taught the value of religion through the want of 
it. At times, however, his views would brighten ; and we 
find him, in one of his happier moods, thus addressing a 
correspondent : "Is it yet time for me to commence a can- 
vass for John Knox's Church ? I have heard that Adam 
Gib, to a considerably late period in his life, expressed the 
hope that he would preach in St. Giles's. You know the 
practical inference. Yet we do injury to more than our 
own happiness by dealing harshly with kind hope, repress- 
ing her ardor, and chiding her for those lamb-like friskings 
in which she indulges to please us." 

And he did bestir himself in the behalf " of John Knox's 
church ; " but it was not by striking at her enemies, but by 
striking at one of the main abuses which had entered into 
her system — the abuse of patronage. And the blow was 
dealt by no feeble or unpractised hand. The cause was 
of importance enough to bring him to the platform. He 
attended, in the beginning of 1833, a meeting of the Anti- 
Patronage Society, and delivered a powerful and impres- 
sive speech, in which he advocated the total abolition of 
patronage, as the sole means of saving the Establishment. 
And perhaps on no occasion was the magnanimity of the 
man more strikingly shown than in the concluding portion 
of this address, or brought out in broader contrast with 
the no doubt widely opposite but equally selfish feelings 
of the class who, rather than relinquish their miserable 
powers of patronage, would stand and see the Church 
overwhelmed amid the surges of popular anarchy, or the 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



133 



class — anxious to fill their meeting-houses — who, like the 
wreckers of Cornwall, exert themselves with a view to her 
destruction, in the hope of profiting by the wreck. "If 
you succeed in your object," said the Doctor, "you will do 
much harm, — you will thin, much thin, my congregation. 
For I must say that, though patronage were abolished to- 
morrow, I could not forthwith enter into the Establishment. 
But I am not so blind or so ignorant of the dispositions of 
the people as to suppose they would act in that manner. 
Your cause will soon come into honor; the restoration of 
long-lost rights will convert popular apathy into popular 
favor, and in their enthusiasm the people will forget that 
there are such things as erroneous teachers and neglect of 
discipline. Do I therefore dread your success, or stand 
aloof from you, on the ground mentioned ? Assuredly not. 
The truth is, that I think I may be of more service to you 
by declining to be in your council. I have only to say, 
therefore, Go on and prosper; though your beginnings have 
been but small, may your latter end greatly increase. You 
have my best wishes and prayers." These surely are the 
sentiments of a man who, to employ the striking figure of 
Burns, held a patent of nobility direct from Deity himself, 
and who had trained and cultivated his heart as sedulously 
and successfully as his head. 

He published, in the May of the same year, his now 
well-known but at the time neglected pamphlet, "What 
ought the General Assembly to do at the present Crisis?" 
It had one great defect — it wanted the author's name; 
and told, in consequence, with less power on the body 
for whose benefit it was chiefly intended. But in none 
of all the Doctor's writings is his wonderful sagacity 
more clearly and unequivocally shown, and there are 
none of them on which subsequent events have read a 
more striking comment. His advice to the Assembly 
forms an emphatic reply to the query in the title : " With- 
out DELAY PETITION THE LEGISLATURE FOR THE ABOLI- 
TION of patronage." But he neither did anticipate, nor 

12 



134 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



could have anticipated, the present position of the Church ; 
for to have done so would have required not simply human 
sagacity, but a superhuman prescience. "No meaning," 
says Pope, " puzzles more than wit." " It is almost impos- 
sible," says Robertson, " to form any satisfactory conjecture 
concerning the motives which influence capricious and 
irregular minds." No one could have presaged more 
justly than Dr. M'Crie the manner in which the Court of 
Session would have decided any ecclesiastical case accord- 
ing to law ; but it was not in the nature of things that he 
could have presaged the manner in which the court was to 
decide ecclesiastical cases contrary to law. There was no 
clew to surmise, no guide to conjecture. One of the first 
principles laid down in his profound and masterly pam- 
phlet — a principle from which he deduces the necessity of 
a popular check in the appointment of ministers — must 
have as effectually prevented him from premising the 
possibility of such interdicts as have been granted to the 
suspended functionaries of Strathbogie or the rejected 
licentiate of Lethendy, as it ought to have stood in the 
way of the court itself in rendering them possible. "Ac- 
cording to law," says the Doctor, "there lies no appeal 
from the decisions of a church court to any civil tribunal, 
not to the Parliament itself, in any case properly ecclesias- 
tical. Everything of this kind is finally settled by the 
decision of the General Assembly, which, in addition to its 
judicial and executive power, claims a legislative authority, 
or at least a power of making authoritative acts, and, with 
the concurrence of a majority of Presbyteries, of enacting 
standing laws which are binding on all the members of 
the Church, laity as well as clergy." The decision of the 
historian of Knox and Melville in a question of this kind 
bears a very different sort of value from that of the Dean 
of Faculty or the Earl of Aberdeen. Mark, too, the 
shrewdness of his conclusion regarding the more thorough- 
going Voluntaries : " You will not find one of them 
taking part in a society for promoting church reform; 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



135 



you will not see one of their names at a petition for 
abolishing patronage. They affect to laugh at such 
attempts to reform minor abuses, although, in fact, they 
dread them more than the most able and elaborate vindi- 
cation of ecclesiastical establishments." 



CONCLUDING ARTICLE. 

We passed a Sabbath in Edinburgh early in 1835, — the 
first after a lapse of nearly ten years, — and sought out the 
well-known chapel of our favorite preacher. There was no 
change there; the same people seemed to occupy the 
same pews ; but so marked was the change in the appear- 
ance of the Doctor, that at first we scarce recognized him. 
"Can it be thought," says a living writer, "that the human 
soul, so nobly impressed by the hand of Deity, is but the 
creature of a passing day, when a brick of Thebes or of 
Luxor retains, undefaced, its original stamp for thousands 
and thousands of years?" The intervening decade had 
borne heavily on the Doctor. He had lost his elasticity 
of tread, and his erect and semi-military bearing; and the 
complexion, darker and less pale than formerly, bore, after 
slight exertion, an apoplectic flush, that indicated some 
perilous derangement in the springs of life. But the too 
apparent decay affected only the earthy and material 
frame : the mind retained all its original vigor. We have 
never listened to the Doctor with deeper interest, or a 
more thorough admiration of his sound and powerful judg- 
ment, than on that Sabbath; and we fancied, but it might 
not be so, that his manner was more impressively earnest, 
even, than usual, — impressive and earnest as it always 
was, — and that he was " laboring with all his might," in 
the belief that the long night was fast closing over him, in 
which "he could no longer work." We stood beside the 
chapel-door as the congregation slowly dismissed, and 
took our last look of the Doctor, believing it to be such, 



136 ' 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



as he entered a hackney coach, assisted by a friend. The 
assistance did not seem necessary, but it was sedulously 
rendered. 

His death took place in the following autumn. Melanc- 
thon, in his latter days, evinced a weariness of the world. 
The folly and villany of mankind, the littleness of their 
aims, and the base and ungenerous spirit in which they 
so often pursued them, sickened and disgusted him, and he 
longed earnestly to be " away from them, and at rest." 
Cowper's wish was of a similar character. The ever-swell- 
ing rumor of outrage and wrong, of oppression, cruelty, 
and deceit, disturbed and pained his gentle spirit, and he 
longed for a "lodge in some vast wilderness," where he 
might never hear it more. There were seasons, towards 
the close of his life, in which Dr. M'Crie experienced a 
weariness such as that of Melancthon, a feeling such as 
that of Cowper. " His heart," says his biographer, " was 
greatly alienated from the world, and tired of the troubled 
scenes of its politics, civil and ecclesiastical." There was 
an impression, too, borne in upon his mind that he was 
soon to be called away, and that his death, like that of his 
friend Andrew Thomson, was to be sudden. He felt his 
little remaining strength fast sinking, and the remarkable 
dream to which we adverted in an early article mingled 
its warning with his waking presentiments, like the morn- 
ing dreams described by Michael Bruce in his Elegy. He 
had seen the hand beckoning him away, which, nearly 
half a century before, had so solemnly devoted him to the 
service of God. Not the less, however, did he continue 
to urge his labors, to walk his round of professional duty, 
to ply his literary occupations, — for he had now engaged 
in a life of Calvin, — and to meet the unceasing demands 
made upon him for counsel and assistance. He was 
too little sedulous, perhaps, to "keep life's flame from 
wasting by repose;" an accumulation of toil was suf- 
fered to press on his health and spirits; but in the 
benignity of his disposition he could not find heart 



DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 



137 



to refuse an application, and so he toiled on. " Some 
people," he said, with reference to a task to which he had 
just submitted, and which was to engage him for a whole 
week, — "some people seem born to be beasts of burden." 
Nor did the presentiment of his approaching dissolution 
lessen his interest in the fortunes of the Church of Scot- 
land. Nothing so delighted him as any indication among 
her ministers of a " disposition to return to the good old 
way of their fathers." The Assembly of May, 1835, ap- 
pointed a day of general fasting — " an assertion," says 
the Doctor's biographer, " of the intrinsic power of the 
Church which he did not anticipate, and which, remind- 
ing him of her better days, appeared a token for good." 
" Will they venture," he said, unacquainted with what the 
Assembly had intended, " to appoint a fast on their own 
authority?" and he received the intelligence with hardly 
less surprise than pleasure, that what he had been scarce 
sanguine enough to anticipate from them they had actually 
done. The Doctor had never held public worship on a 
king's fast, but readily and willingly on this occasion did 
he join with the Church. His resentments, however, were 
all over ; and he anticipated, more in sorrow than in anger, 
and anticipated justly, that the Dissenters, as a body, 
" would keep their shops open and their churches shut." 
"They did not use to do that," he said, " on clays of royal 
appointment." 

But if no man could evince a deeper interest in the wel- 
fare of the Church of Scotland, there was no man, on the 
other hand, who could feel more painfully for what he 
deemed the imprudence of her ministers, or for any general 
act on the part of her friends, which compromised, as he 
believed, either her safety or her usefulness. The follow- 
ing remark in a letter to a friend — a remark full of shrewd 
meaning, and on which recent events have been reading a 
comment of tremendous emphasis — belongs to the closing 
year of his life, and craves careful study : " What fools our 
church folks are, to identify their cause with Toryism at 

12* 



138 



DR. THOMAS M'cRIE. 



the present day, — to alienate the whigs, and oblige them 
to league with radicals, — to give them an excuse for 
deserting the defence of the Church whenever they shall 
find it safe or politically wise to do so ! Don't you think 
that our times bear a great resemblance to those of 1640 
in England, with the difference (great indeed), that there 
is not the same religious spirit in Parliament and in the 
public which existed at that period? How a collision 
between the aristocracy and the commons (not to speak 
of the monarchy) is to be avoided, I do not see. The 
public mind is much more extensively enlightened as to 
politics than it was in 1793; and it has got a power — a 
lever — which it did not then possess. I have no doubt I 
have got a great portion of the incredulity of my name- 
sake, and would wish to say with respect to public pros- 
pects, 'Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief."' 

He had held, as we have said, the Assembly's fast; and 
never, it was remarked, had he addressed his people with 
more solemn effect than on that occasion. On the Sabbath 
after, he preached twice from the striking text in Matthew, 
" Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge 
his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he 
will burn up the chaff* with unquenchable fire." At the 
close of the service he seated himself at the door of the 
vestry, contrary to his usual practice, " and watched the 
people while they were retiring, until they had all gone 
out." On the afternoon of the Tuesday following, after 
spending the early part of the day in visiting some of his 
congregation, he was seized, immediately on his return 
home, with a severe pain in the bowels ; and, after experi- 
encing an interval of partial relief, fell into a slumber, out 
of which he never awoke. He continued to breathe until 
the middle of the next day ; and then, surrounded by his 
friends, and by many of his beloved flock, who had col- 
lected to witness his last moments, he passed to his reward, 
without a groan or a struggle. He had entered the sixty- 
third year of his age, and the fortieth of his ministry. 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



139 



His funeral was attended by nearly fifteen hundred per- 
sons, including the magistracy of Edinburgh, its ministers 
of all persuasions, the preachers and students attending the 
halls of the Establishment and the United Secession, and 
by a deputation from the Assembly's Commission, headed 
by the clerk and the moderator. Nor could his remains 
have found a - more appropriate resting-place than the 
ancient cemetery to which they were conveyed, — the burial 
ground of the Greyfriars. It contains the dust of Alex- 
ander Henderson, the great leader of the Church during 
the troubles of the first Charles ; it contains also, in its 
malefactor's corner, the remains and the monument of the 
martyrs who, in the cause of Christ and of Presbytery, 
laid down their lives in Edinburgh during the dissolute 
and bloody reign of Charles the Second ; and for an entire 
twelvemonth its open area was the prison in which the 
captive Covenanters of Bothwell Bridge were exposed to 
every inclemency of the seasons, and to the mockeries and 
revilings of their fierce and cruel jailers. Nor is there 
any lack of the kindred dust once animated by genius. 
There occur on the surrounding tombs the names of Colin 
M'Laren, of Allan Ramsay, of Hugh Blair, and of William 
Robertson. But the talents which the Task-Master en- 
trusts to his servants, whether the sum total consists of 
one or of ten, are of but little value, compared with the 
use to which they have been devoted, and the effects which 
the possessors have accomplished through their means. 
We have stood beside the Doctor's grave, and felt, amid 
the deep silence of the place where knowledge and device 
faileth, and where there is no work and no wisdom, how 
well and honestly he had " occupied " his. His important 
labors are over ; the work set him to do has been faith- 
fully performed. Though during his life he stood apart 
from the Church which he loved, it was only as a watch- 
man on some outer tower, or like a sentinel of the times 
of the persecution, stationed on some eminence of the 
waste, to warn the assembled congregation of coming dan- 



140 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



ger; and the imperishable monuments which he has reared 
stand forth to shed on the present the light of the past, 
and as beacons which, however times may darken, will con- 
tinue to mark out the course which churches and nations 
will ultimately find it their interest as well as their duty 
to pursue. A massy and tasteful monument of white 
stone, erected by his sorrowing flock, as a memorial of " his 
worth and of their gratitude," marks out his final resting- 
place, and bears an inscription whose rare merit it is to be 
at once highly eulogistic and strictly true. 

Our sketch has been miserably imperfect indeed if the 
reader has not been enabled to form from it some estimate, 
correct though not adequate, of the character of Dr. 
M'Crie. His whole life w r as a powerful illustration of how 
much a superior mind can be improved and ennobled by 
Christian principle. It shows also how necessary integrity 
is to the development of a high order of intellect. Had 
the Doctor been less honest, he would have been less saga- 
cious also. His mind, like a fine instrument, took the 
measure and tendencies of passing events ; and there were 
no disturbing influences of selfishness to throw their mix- 
ture of uncertainty and error into the process. His wis- 
dom, in part at least, was a consequence of his magnanim- 
ity. It may seem a mere fancy to couple such men as Dr. 
M'Crie and the Duke of Wellington — the statesman and 
general w T ith the historian and divine ; but resembling 
minds may be placed in very opposite circumstances; and 
for sobriety of feeling, far-seeing sagacity, great firmness 
of purpose, an impregnable native honesty, uninfluenced by 
the small motives of party, — in short, for all that consti- 
tutes the safe and great leader, — the standing of both 
men, each in his own sphere, refers to a level to which very 
few attain. Plutarch has parallelisms that lie less parallel. 
We shall just refer, ere we close, to one or two detached 
points in the intellectual and literary character of Dr. 
M'Crie. 

It was well remarked by Lord Jeffrey, in his admirable 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



141 



review, that the Life of Knox " exhibited a rare union of 
the patient research and sober judgment which character- 
ize the more laborious class of historians, with the boldness 
of thinking and force of imagination which are sometimes 
substituted in their place." The remark strikingly illus- 
trates a peculiar excellence of the Doctor's intellect. He 
could not rest on the surface of a subject, even if he had 
wished it. It was his nature to search to the very bottom, 
at whatever cost of labor, — to pursue some obscure fact 
through a hundred different authorities, until he had at 
length fixed it down before him as one of the unimpeach- 
able certainties of history. The privileged friends whom 
he at times received in his study used to be utterly appalled 
by the huge masses of books and manuscripts which always 
lay piled up before him for constant reference ; and so se- 
verely and conscientiously was his judgment exercised in 
every instance, that on not so much as one of his state- 
ments have even his abler antagonists succeeded in casting 
a shadow of doubt. Robertson was much his inferior in 
research. Hume, whose defects in patient investigation 
are now pretty generally known, was immeasurably so. In 
tracing the history of opinion and doctrine, where of neces- 
sity the evidence must be more shadowy and intangible 
than in whatever relates to conduct or action, the degree 
of certainty at which he invariably succeeded in arriving 
was truly wonderful. The whole bearing of bygone con- 
troversies, their after-effects on doctrine and belief, the 
degree in which they had led the parties they had divided 
to modify, retract, restate, — the influence on society 
of particular minds and peculiar modes of thought, — all 
seemed to open before him as he advanced, alone and 
unassisted, on his solitary and laborious course. 

His style and manner fitted. him no less for his task than 
his unwearied perseverance. To employ one of Johnson's 
figures, the heat of his genius sublimed his learning. It is 
related by Gibbon, that after he had formed his determina- 
tion of devoting himself to literature, he perused the then 



142 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



recently published histories of Robertson and Hume. The 
measured and stately periods of Robertson delighted him ; 
and yet he could hope, that with much pains and great 
study he might at length succeed in writing such a style. 
But he read Hume and despaired. Art might enable him 
to rival the exquisite art of the one, but art could not 
enable him to equal the still more exquisite nature of the 
other. Hume is one of the most readable of historians : 
he is invariably unaffected, invariably clear. Robertson 
palls : we admire his pages, but his volumes tire. Now, 
Dr. M'Crie in this respect resembles Hume. His pages are 
not so elegant as those of Robertson, but they are more 
attractive, and the reader turns over more of them at a 
sitting. We merely peruse the history of Scotland; we 
devour the biography of Knox. The number of editions 
which have appeared within the last few months, since the 
copyright has expired, evinces the degree of popularity 
which the latter work is destined to enjoy in the future. 
The last we saw formed a two-shilling volume ; its price 
and appearance showed that it was intended for the com- 
mon people ; and we paid our respects to it, at once recog- 
nizing in it a formidable opponent of the Earl of Dal- 
housie's arguments, the Court of Session's encroachments, 
and the Earl of Aberdeen's bill. 

We refer, ere we close our remarks, to but one other 
trait in the literary career of Dr. M'Crie. There is an 
occasional quaintness in some of his finer passages, that, to 
men deeply read in the theology of the Church's better 
days, constitues an additional charm. His eloquence is 
that of the divines of the Commonwealth, rendered clas- 
sical through native taste and the study of the better 
models. We submit, as an example, the following exqui- 
site passage : "Who would be a slave ! is the exclamation 
of those who are themselves free, and sometimes of those 
who, provided they enjoy freedom themselves, care not 
though the whole world were in bondage. But there is a 
sentiment still more noble than that. Who would be a 



DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 



143 



slave-dealer, a patron, an advocate for slavery! To be a 
slave lias been the hard, but not dishonorable, lot of many 
a good man and noble spirit. But to be a tyrant, — that is 
disgrace ! To trample on the rights of his fellow-creature ; 
to treat him, whether it be with cruelty or kindness, as 
a dog; to hold him in chains, when he has perpetrated or 
threatens no violence ; to carry him with a rope about his 
neck, not to the scaffold, but to the market ; to sell him 
whom God made after his own image, and whom Christ 
redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, 
and, by the act of transferrence, to tear him from his own 
bowels, — that is disgraceful ! I protest before you that I 
would a thousand times rather have my brow branded 
with the name of Slave, than have written on the palm of 
my hand or the sole of my foot the initial letter of the 
word Tyrant /" 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



PART FIRST. 

It was forty-five years last May (1840) since the famous 
debate on missions took place in the General Assembly of 
the Church of Scotland. A race unborn at the time have 
now reached the term of middle life ; and of those who 
either joined in the discussion, or recorded their vote's at 
its close, very few survive. There are many important 
facts connected with the history of this memorable debate, 
which still read their lesson to the country ; and during 
the present pause in the political world, our readers may 
deem themselves not ill employed in glancing over some 
of its more striking details. It furnishes a better illustra- 
tion of the true character of Moderatism than they will 
be able to find for themselves almost anywhere else; and 
it were surely well they should all thoroughly know what 
sort of a religion it is which has so lately challenged for 
itself an exclusive right to be recognized as the state 
religion of Scotland. 

Our materials are fortunately very ample. The art of 
the reporter was but in its infancy at the time, especially 
in Scotland ; the contemporary debates of even the Eng- 
lish Parliament appear but as mere skeleton sketches, that 
rather resemble lists of contents than series of speeches; 
and yet. by a rare chance there exists a report of this sin- 
gular debate, as ample and complete as any of the present 
day. Moderatism had its likeness taken at the time at 



THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. 



145 



full length, and in one of its worst attitudes, and, as if to 
prevent all suspicion regarding the truth of the picture, 
taken apparently not by an enemy. The unfortunate Rob- 
ert Heron, the familiar friend of Burns, and whose melan- 
choly history has been so touchingly recorded by D'Israeli 
in his " Calamities of Authors," lived at this period exclus- 
ively by his exertions as an " author of all work." He sat 
in the Assembly during the debate as an elder for his 
native burgh of New Galloway ; he even took a promi- 
nent part in it ; and to his singularly ready and masterly 
pen can we alone attribute a report so unlike, in its fulness 
and general literary tone, almost all the other reports of 
the age. It may be well, too, to mention that, though 
extensively circulated at the time in the form of a pam- 
phlet, its faithfulness has never once been questioned. 

It has been remarked by Carlyle, that "the history of 
whatever man has accomplished is at bottom only the 
history of great men, leaders of their brethren, who have 
been the modellers, and, in a wide sense, the creators, of 
whatsoever the general mass of men have contrived to do." 
Certainly, in the religious, as in the political world, we 
find all the more remarkable events, and all the more influ- 
ential codes of belief, clustered, if we may so express our- 
selves, round a few great names. The history of Knox is 
the history of the Reformation in Scotland ; the very name 
of Calvin expresses the religious code of half the churches 
of Protestantism. Apparently on a similar principle, we 
find the cause of general missionary exertion in this coun- 
try connected in an especial manner with one great name. 
The reader of one of the most amusing novels of Scott — 
Guy Mannering — must remember that, on Colonel Man- 
nering's visit to Edinburgh, the lawyer Pleydell brings him 
to the Greyfriars to hear Principal Robertson preach, and 
that, instead of the historian, he hears but the historian's 
colleague. Sir Walter had too often sat in the Greyfriars 
not to know that the pulpit ministrations of Robertson 
could have formed no proper subject of favorable or 

13 



146 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



striking description. They were marked but by the dead 
inanity inseparable from an utter lack of earnestness and 
an ignorance of the gospel. And so he described, and in 
his happiest vein, a preacher of a very opposite stamp. A 
man of a remarkable though somewhat ungainly appearance 
entered the pulpit. His pale, fair complexion contrasted 
strangely with a black wig without a grain of powder. 
"A narrow chest and a stooping posture, no gown, not 
even that of Geneva, a tumbled band, and a gesture that 
seemed scarce voluntary, were the first circumstances that 
struck a stranger." They were all forgotten, however, as 
the preacher proceeded in his discourse — a discourse "in 
which the Calvinism of the Kirk of Scotland was ably 
supported, yet made the basis of a sound system of prac- 
tical morals, which should neither shelter the sinner under 
the cloak of speculative faith or of peculiarity of opinion, 
nor yet leave him loose to the waves of unbelief and 
schism." " Something there was of an antiquated turn 
of argument and metaphor," continues Scott, "but it only 
served to give zest and peculiarity to the style of elocution. 
The sermon was not read. The enunciation, which at first 
seemed imperfect and embarrassed, became, as the preacher 
warmed in his progress, animated and distinct; and although 
the discourse could not be quoted as a correct specimen of 
pulpit eloquence, yet Mannering had seldom heard so much 
learning, metaphysical acuteness, and energy of argument, 
brought into the service of Christianity. ' Such,' he said, 
going out of the church, 'must have been the preachers to 
whose unfearing minds, and acute though sometimes rudely 
exercised talents, we owe the Reformation."' He must 
have been assuredly no common man that could have thus 
mollified the anti-evangelical prejudices of Scott. The 
preacher, described was Dr. John Erskine, of Edinburgh, for 
many years the revered leader of the Evangelical party in 
the Church of Scotland. 

It was the fate of Dr. Erskine, as of many a good man 
besides, to contend on the losing side all his life long; but 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



147 



be fought on in hope, ever animated by the belief, in the 
midst of present defeat and disaster, that God himself was 
pledged to the principles which he maintained, and that 
their ultimate triumph was secure. He was the first man 
in Scotland to raise his voice against the war with the 
American colonies, as alike impolitic and unjust, — as 
opposed in principle to the sacred oracles, and as pregnant 
with disaster to the country. His little tract, " Shall I go 
to War with my American Brethren ? " takes its place 
among the most powerful of his productions. But the 
warning voice was unheeded ; and so, after much blood 
had been shed, and much treasure wasted, the colonies 
were lost to Britain. He was among the first Scotchmen, 
too, that took an active interest in the abolition of slavery ; 
and when twitted with the fact, in his old age, by the 
Edinburgh lawyer who now sits on the bench, he rose, 
with all the spirit of his most vigorous days, " to acknowl- 
edge, and glory in the acknowledgment," — we employ 
his own words, — "that" he was "a member of the Slave 
Abolition Society. For why?" he added: "I wished to 
see justice done to cruelly oppressed fellow-creatures, 
dragged reluctantly from one quarter of the glob to 
another to satisfy the rapacity of our countrymen, — men 
who can boast proudly enough of their own freedom. I 
wished, too, to see a stain, the blackest that can be con- 
ceived, wiped away from the national character of Britain. 
This I wished, — this is still my wish ; nor will all that 
the gentlemen opposite can say prevent me from effecting 
it, so far as God has given me the power." Dr. Erskine 
was long remarkable for the extent and expansiveness of 
his views in connection with the general interests of 
Christianity. They were not confined to one kingdom, 
nor even one quarter of the globe. When yet a young 
man, his attention had been strongly excited by the 
remarkable revival of religion which had taken place in 
North America, chiefly in connection with the labors of 
that truly eminent Christian and profound thinker, the 



148 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



metaphysician of the New "World, President Edwards ; and 
in order to obtain the earliest and most extensive religious 
intelligence from this quarter, in the hope of awakening a 
similar spirit at home, he had entered into an extensive 
correspondence with the distinguished President himself, 
and several of his fellow-laborers.^ With a similar purpose 
he also opened up a correspondence with many of the 
more eminent divines of the continent, which he main- 
tained during the course of his long life. And, thus stand- 
ing, like a prophet of old, on a hill-top, scarce a cloud could 
arise on the horizon of the religious world, or a gleam of 
sunshine break out in even its more solitary recesses, that 
escaped his notice. As he advanced in years, his interest 
in the survey increased. He saw some great convulsion at 
hand, which was perhaps to agitate all Europe; and so 
intense was his anxiety, that, at a period of life when the 
few who survive so long deem their time of exertion over, 
he set himself sedulously to the study of the German 
language, as a new medium of knowledge, and actually 
mastered its difficulties in a very few weeks. We may 
mention, as a proof of the unwearied zeal of the man, that 
eve i at his death, which took place in his eighty-second 
year, he was found to have collected materials for the 
current number of his periodical pamphlet, "Religious 
Intelligence from Abroad." 

The storm which he had foreseen in "a cloud like a 
man's hand," at length burst out in all the horrors of the 
first French Revolution. A whole nation recognized the 
tenets of atheism as the moral and religious code of its 
people, and pronounced death to be an eternal sleep. No 
inconsiderable portion of the people of the other countries 
of Europe seemed fast treading in their footsteps. In the 
centre of the great moral earthquake which ensued, the 
gilded pinnacles of society were thrown down and broken 
in pieces; blood flowed in torrents; the whole face of 
things was fearfully changed. Men who had had no pre- 
vious quarrel with skepticism — who, like Gibbon, rather 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



149 



had spent years of toilsome nights and laborious days in 
securing its spread — were struck aghast to see it resolve 
itself into its occult elements, convulsion and murder. Men 
who had held by a mere semblance of the truth — the 
Moderates of all churches — feared that the last days of 
the Christian religion had at length come, and that the 
general gloom betokened its setting. The popish hierarchy 
had fled in terror of their lives from France, routed by 
the Encyclopaedists and the populace. Paine and his 
associates in our own country, backed by the previous 
labors of the bosom-friends and honored correspondents 
of Robertson and Blair, had commenced their ferocious 
attack on the religion of the Bible. Even to some not 
unacquainted with the vital energies of that Christianity 
which God himself has sworn to maintain, the time seemed 
a time of defeat and disaster, in which it behooved the 
cause of religion to yield, at least for a season, and take 
shelter till the fury of the assault might have spent itself 
in its own mad exertions. Very different indeed was the 
estimate of the aged and venerable leader of Evangelism 
in Scotland. The time might seem to others a time of 
inevitable retreat ; he, on the contrary, deemed it a proper 
time for advance. For nearly sixty years had he now 
looked forth upon the long-protracted battle, in which the 
principles of good and evil contended for the mastery ; and 
it was this dark hour, of all others, that he deemed fittest 
for the charge. He corresponded with his friends ; he 
encouraged them to action in the missionary field. It was 
no time for them, he urged, to rest idly on their arms. 

Nearly a century previous, a Society had been instituted 
in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge ; 
but its funds had been at no time sufficient to enable it to 
carry its exertions beyond the limits of the kingdom, or 
even adequately to supply the destitution of our Highlands 
and Islands, its more especial field. At a middle period 
in the century, the Moravians of Denmark had originated 
those arduous but singularly successful schemes for the 

w 



150 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



spread of the gospel, through which the glad tidings of sal- 
vation had been carried to Greenland, the West Indies, and 
many parts of Africa and America. A very few years pre- 
vious, some worthy Baptist ministers in Northampton, and 
Leicestershire had set the missionary example to England, 
by originating a Society for the Diffusion of the Gospel; the 
London Society had been established the year previous ; 
and now, in the spring of 1796, the first meeting of the 
Edinburgh Missionary Society was held in this city, — the 
truly venerable Dr. John Erskine, the father of the insti- 
tution, then in his seventy-fifth year, in the chair. One of 
the first acts of the society was to address a circular to all 
the ministers of religion in the country, and to as many 
private individuals besides as were deemed able and will- 
ing to assist in forwarding its objects. All the ministers 
of the Church of Scotland were included in the list, as a 
matter of course; the society urged their cooperation, 
and entreated their prayers; considerable interest was 
excited over the country ; the matter was discussed in 
synods and presbyteries ; and the immediate result at this 
stage, in connection with the Church, was the transmission 
of two overtures to the General Assembly of the current 
year, recommendatory of a favorable consideration of the 
missionary scheme, — one from the Synod of Moray, the 
other from the Synod of Fife. The General Assembly 
met, and in arranging the order of business, the 27th day 
of May was fixed for its deliberations on the overtures on 
missions. 

The generally recognized leaders of the two parties had 
been returned members of the Assembly — Dr. John Ers- 
kine, now, as we have said, in his seventy-sixth year, and 
Dr. George Hill, of St. Andrews, a man then in the prime 
of life. To the character of the first we have already 
introduced our readers, — an introduction unnecessary, we 
have little doubt, in the case of by far the greater number 
of them; that of the latter is also pretty generally known, 
but certainly much more variously estimated. " The boy," 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



151 



says Wordsworth, " is father to the man." "We find the 
embryo Moderate leader, when yet a lad of eighteen, and 
at a time when Chesterfield was deemed a profound mor- 
alist, writing thus to his mother from London : "I am sure 
I am pliable enough, — more than I think sometimes quite 
right. I can laugh or be grave, talk nonsense on politics 
or philosophy, just as it suits my company, and can submit 
to any mortification to please those with whom I converse. 
I cannot flatter ; but I can listen with attention, and seem 
pleased icith everything that anybody says. By arts like 
these, which have perhaps a little meanness in them, but 
are so convenient that one does not choose to lay them 
aside, I have had the good luck to be a favorite in most 
places." " In the general scramble for the good things of 
this world," says one of the Doctor's biographers, "had 
such a man failed, who could ever hope to succeed?" 
George Hill did not fail. He was unlucky in one instance, 
in one of his patrons, through whose influence he might 
have risen high in the English Church; but, ere he had 
made up his mind to enter into orders in the more aristo- 
cratic Establishment, with a prospect of preferment supe- 
rior to anything which Presbyterianism can offer, — a 
course much urged on him by his friends, — his patron 
unluckily died. Still, however, Presbytery has its good 
things also; at least, half a dozen of its tolerably good 
things make a very good thing when united ; and both in 
practice and theory Hill was a pluralist. He made speeches 
in the Speculative Club in praise of the aristocracy, by 
which he acquired very considerable eclat. To favor a 
political friend, he became the holder of a paper vote in 
Nairnshire, which, under the dread of being possibly sub- 
jected to a prosecution for perjury, he again relinquished, 
after having once exercised the privilege which it con- 
ferred. In his twenty-second year he became Professor 
of Greek in the University of St. Andrews ; he had been 
offered by the Earl of Haddington of those days the parish 
of Coldstream ; but with prospects such as his, a country 



152 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



parish seemed a somewhat inconsiderable matter ; and the 
result justified his prudence; for ere his thirtieth year he 
had united to his Greek professorship the second parochial 
charge of St. Andrews. A few years after, he became 
Professor of Divinity, and, in addition, Principal of the 
University. He was next nominated one of his Majesty's 
chaplains for Scotland ; next, one of the deans of the Chapel 
Royal and to all these profitable offices was superadded 
the merely honorary office of dean to the Order of the 
Thistle. If an aggregation of offices lead to an aggregated 
amount of character, never, surely, had church party a 
more honorable leader than the opponent of Dr. Erskine. 
One of the ministers of St. Andrews, its Professor of The- 
ology, the Principal of its University, one of his Majesty's 
chaplains for Scotland, one of the deans of the Chapel 
Royal, and, finally, the dean of the Order of the Thistle, 
all walked into the General Assembly in the person of Dr. 
Hill. 

Of the character of his measures as a public man it is 
not difficult at this time of day to form a correct estimate. 
They are now matters of history ; and the experience of 
half a century has read its comment on the miserable nar- 
rowness of the policy by which they were dictated. " Fred- 
erick of Prussia," says Byron, " ran away from both the 
first and the last of his fields." Nearly the same thing 
may be said of Dr. Hill. He broke down as a leader in 
both his earlier and his concluding attempts. Though 
much superior as a theologian to Dr. Robertson, and appa- 
rently much more sincere in his beliefs, he was by many 
degrees a less prudent man. If the historian succeeded in 
prostrating the spirit of Presbytery, he deemed the achieve- 
ment sufficient : its skeleton forms he suffered to remain. 
It was enough for him that he enveloped these in an atmos- 
phere of death : there were risks connected with their 
removal which he was too wary and too far-seeing to run. 
He strenuously resisted, for instance, every attempt to set 
aside the Confession of Faith ; he permitted the Call to 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. . 153 



survive in all its original integrity of form, deeming it suf- 
ficient that in practice he had reduced it to a dead letter ; 
and during the whole of his reign — the most absolute, 
perhaps,* of any ecclesiastical leader — he allowed the 
Assembly, without challenge, to raise every year its appeal 
to the Legislature against patronage. Dr. Hill, as we have 
said, was less prudent. Almost his first legislative attempt 
was an attempt to abolish the Call. The measure, how- 
ever, though strenuously defended by Dr. Cook, in his 
biography, was regarded as too extreme by some of the 
more wary, and with these also by not a few, we may trust, 
of the better disposed Moderates. By the union of these 
with the Evangelical minority the design was defeated, 
and the Church was thus spared the signal disgrace of 
destroying by her own act one of the most important, and, 
surely, not the least sacred, of her liberties. He was again 
defeated still more signally, at a much later period, in his 
defence of the imposition of the miserably profane Test 
Act on members of the Established Church of Scotland. 
He deemed it no hardship, he said, for Presbyterians of 
liberal and enlightened minds to partake of the Lord's 
Supper according to the mode sanctioned by the sister 
church. He did not add that, regarded as a prelude to 
office, it could scarce be deemed other than a very agree- 
able ceremony indeed. But the majority of the Church 
thought differently, and so Dr. Hill was defeated. Unfor- 
tunately, however, for the character of his party, there 
were measures in which he was entirely successful. It was 
on a motion made by Dr. Hill, in the General Assembly of 
1784, that the appeal against patronage to the Government 
of the country, which, year after year, from the times of 
Lord President Dundas, had been raised by the Church, 
was suffered to drop. He had the satisfaction, too, — though 
we doubt whether even his biographer, Dr. Cook, will now 
envy him the triumph, — of defeating, on the question of 
missions, the venerable Dr. Erskine and his party, and of 
thus branding Moderatism, though, surely, all unwittingly, 



154 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



full in the view of the religious world, as a principle essen- 
tially anti-Christian. It is but justice, however, to the 
character of Dr. Hill, to add one trait more. Very rarely 
is the thorough Moderate, though able and accomplished, 
a profound theologian. His lack of belief in the funda- 
mental doctrines of theology — a lack of belief similar to 
that which obtains in the present age regarding the pecu- 
liar dogmas of the Schoolmen, and which prevents any 
very thorough study of their writings — has the effect of 
inducing superficiality. Why spend much time in acquaint- 
ing one's self with doubtful complexities, that lead to no 
practical result? Such, however, was not the conclusion 
of Dr. Hill. His system of theology is not without its 
defects. His exposures of dangerous heresy and his exhi- 
bitions of Divine truth are alike characterized by a freezing 
chill of sentiment. But superficiality is not his fault : his 
work is that of a masterly theologian, who at least saw 
clearly, though he could not feel strongly. We know not 
whether we are to seek an explanation of the fact in a 
peculiarity of character adverted to by himself in one of 
his earlier letters : " I am, and perhaps all my life shall 
continue," he says, " a close student ; but I hate learning." 



PART SECOND. 



The debate on missions opened with one of those disin- 
genuous stratagems on the part of the Moderate leader, 
which, consorting thoroughly with the character and prin- 
ciples of the party, have ever constituted the staple of its 
policy, and in the management of which few men ever ex- 
celled Dr. Hill. Trick and finesse are the proper weapons 
of a false or unfaithful Church in a civilized age, whether 
she have to defend herself against the assaults of infidels and 
skeptics, whose doctrines, however congenial to her actual 
beliefs, would lead to the alienation of her temporalities, 
or to oppose herself a thousand times more thoroughly in 



THE DEBATE OjST MISSIONS. 



155 



earnest to the exertions of a very different class, animated 
by a desire of heightening her character and correcting her 
errors. 

There were, as we have said, two overtures recommen- 
datory of the missionary scheme before the Assembly, — 
one from the Synod of Moray, the other from the Synod 
of Fife. The Fife overture was of a general, though at 
the same time sufficiently definite character: it merely 
urged on the Assembly the consideration of the most 
effectual methods by which the Church of Scotland might 
be made to contribute to the diffusion of the gospel over 
the. world. The Moray overture was more particular in 
what it recommended. Taking it somewhat too readily 
for granted that the course advised by the other overture 
the Assembly was already prepared to pursue, it went a 
step further, and earnestly urged the passing of an act 
recommendatory of a general collection in aid of the mis- 
sionary scheme throughout the various parishes of Scot- 
land. Both the leaders of the Assembly were shrewd and 
far-seeing men, and both intimately acquainted with the 
nature of the materials on which they had to operate. 
They alike saw that the Fife overture, if considered alone, 
and on its own merits, might very possibly pass into a law, 
which, however inoperative, would at least recognize the 
excellence of missionary exertion ; they alike saw that the 
prevailing Moderatism of the Assembly would be at once 
roused to oppose the Moray overture, and that there was 
no chance whatever of its passing. The great object of 
Dr. Hill was to defeat both, and so get rid of the trouble- 
some subject of missions altogether. The great object of 
Dr. Erskine was to get all passed in their favor that could 
possibly pass. Dr. Hill urged, therefore, that the overtures 
should be considered conjunctly. If he but succeeded in 
getting what he already deemed the dead tied about the 
neck of the living, he was secure, as he too justly augured, 
of soon seeing them both equally dead. Dr. Erskine con- 
tended, on the contrary, that they should be considered 



156 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



separately. The one, he argued, was "of a general, the 
other of a specific nature ; and general propositions often 
command united assent, though men may differ widely 
regarding the time and manner of applying them to prac- 
tice." But in deliberative assemblies, arguments fail when 
they have to contend with votes ; and it was carried, on 
the motion of Dr. Hill, that the overtures should be con- 
sidered, not separately, as became their character, but 
conjunctly, as consorted best with his own invidious 
policy. The preliminary motion virtually decided the 
fate of the whole discussion ; but Evangelism fought on. 

One of the first speakers in the debate was the Rev. Mr. 
M'Bean, of Alves — a worthy north country clergyman, 
uncle, we believe, of the present excellent minister of Forres. 
The good man had come from a remote rural district, in 
which he had been studying his Bible, and sedulously walk- 
ing, in conformity with its injunctions, his useful round of 
duty ; and in rising to support the Moray overture, it does 
not seem to have once entered his mind that there were two 
courses of conduct open regarding it. " The propagation 
of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ!" — Had they not all 
been praying for it all their lives long? and was it not their 
duty to work as well as to pray — their duty, and not the less 
surely their high privilege and honor, that in this matter 
they could be fellow-workers with God? "Thy kingdom 
come." What Christian man could look forth without 
compassion on that vast portion of the earth which was 
still a region of thick darkness and horrid cruelty, and in 
which poor perishing fellow-creatures, born to immortality, 
enjoyed no opportunity of embracing the blessed gospel ? 
And then, how great was their encouragement ! Did' not 
prophecy point their faith to a period when the knowledge 
of the Lord would be everywhere — all around and over 
this wide world, like the waters of a shoreless ocean ? and 
should not they, strengthened by a hope so certain, be now 
up and doing, : — using their every endeavor to hasten the 
happy time, — working, as well as praying, that the king. 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



157 



doni of grace might be advanced, and the kingdom of 
glory hastened ? The good man sat down, and was suc- 
ceeded by another speaker on the same side — the truly 
venerable Dr. Johnston, of North Leith. 

It is scarce necessary that we advert to the character of 
this man. We stood not long ago in a humble domicile in 
Leith, before a rudely framed print of Dr. Johnston : it 
had been taken in his extreme age. The strongly marked 
and somewhat harsh features bore evidence to the ravages 
of time ; but the course of years had worn into them the 
expression of his habitual mood, in characters which it was 
impossible to misinterpret, and the effect was something 
more powerful than beauty. Never have we seen thought- * 
ful seriousness united to habitual benevolence more legibly 
impressed. " O, sir," said the inmate of the humble domi- 
cile, an aged woman, as she pointed to the print, — "O, sir, 
there were few like him. For many, many a year have I 
heard the precious gospel from those earnest, blessed lips." 
Dr. Johnston was one of the truly excellent of the earth. 
He rose on this occasion to signify his hearty approval of the 
two overtures on the table, but with evidently less confi- 
dence of success than was entertained by the north country 
minister; for he knew better than he the character of the 
party ranged on the opposite benches. In running over 
nearly the same line of argument, his fears were ever and 
anon breaking out. "Surely," he said, "however much 
they might differ from one another in matters of civil or 
ecclesiastical polity, they could not be other than united 
in whatever tended to promote the kingdom of their 
blessed Lord and Master ! " What if he, in whose pres- 
ence and in whose name they sat, and to whom one day 
they would have all to render their final account, was now 
waiting among them for some marked expression of their 
sincerity in his cause ! Was the General Assembly of 
the Church of Scotland to declare against both him and 
it, by thwarting the means of promoting it? Means must 
be used ; they are the instruments by which God works. 

14 



158 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



The advance of his kingdom among the heathen was the 
subject of their daily prayers, but it would not do to say, 
"Be ye warmed and clothed — be ye enlightened, reformed, 
and saved," without doing something more. They were 
called on to act as well as pray. Thousands, bound by 
only their common Christianity, were stepping forward to 
promote the missionary cause ; their heathen brethren lay 
in their blood : would they, the Church of Scotland, pass 
by, like the Levite, on the other side ? Paul reckoned 
himself " a debtor to the Greek and the barbarian." Did 
Scotland lie under no such debt? The fact that they 
themselves had been called from heathen darkness by 
missionary exertion in the remote past, had given a direct 
claim upon them to the perishing heathen of all time. Dr. 
Johnston ceased, and there rose a speaker on the Moderate 
side. 

He was a tall, handsome man, in the prime of early 
manhood, fashionably dressed, and evidently a layman. 
Strange to relate, he rose, not to oppose, but strenuously 
to advocate the missionary cause. It is recorded in the 
biography of the Rev. Thomas Scott, that, when a thought- 
less young man, he was severely reprimanded 'for some 
piece of wickedness by his master, — a person of no reli- 
gion, and who pretended to none, — and that from this 
very circumstance the reprimand struck him more deeply 
than any that had ever been dealt him. Moderatism on 
the present occasion received a similar rebuke. 

Robert Heron, a name introduced into one of the minor 
poems of Burns, 1 in a manner that too effectually precludes 
all idea of his having been a man of serious religion, was 
one of the many who seem born to illustrate the important 
truth, that without prudence and conduct there is no real 
value in talent or learning, and no virtue in genius. He 
was the son of a poor weaver; and in studying for the 
Church — for he had unluckily seen no other mode of rising 
from his miserably depressed level — he had struggled hard 



1 Epistle to Dr. Blacklock. 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 159 

with all the difficulties and hardships incidental to extreme 
poverty and an utter lack of friends. At the early age of 
eleven, he had both to support and educate himself, by 
mingling with his studies the labors of teaching. He 
fought his onward way bravely. In addition to his other 
acquirements, he completely mastered in his leisure hours 
the French language, attained to a thorough command of 
English, acquainted himself with general literature, wrote 
verses and essays ; and, on removing to Edinburgh to at- 
tend the classes at college, he found means of introducing 
himself to the booksellers of the place, and of so impress- 
ing them with ideas of the force and versatility of his tal- 
ents, that they furnished him with instant employment. He 
wrote translations by the score ; produced original works, 
critical, historical, topographical, which, though now forgot- 
ten, were favorably received in their day. He delivered, 
lectures on the law of nature and of nations, on subjects 
of taste and questions of science ; and in the keen thirst 
of literary fame, and possessed of an iron constitution, 
which his sixteen hours a day employment failed for years 
sensibly to affect, he gave up his first-cherished hopes of a 
competency in connection with the Church, and devoted 
himself to literature exclusively. Rarely is the life of the 
literary aspirant a happy one ; very rarely, except in the 
few cases in which religion exerts its influence over the 
whole conduct, is it even a comparatively innocent one. 
The literary man of the last century, too, was almost 
always an eccentric, unsettled being, ill-hafted in society, 
and licensed beyond his contemporaries by well-nigh gen- 
eral consent. Heron too soon acquired the character of 
his class. Periods of intense study were succeeded by occa- 
sional fits of dissipation. He was ambitious, too, of being 
deemed rather a gentleman than a man of literature, — 
no uncommon weakness among literary men, — and affected 
a fashionable style of living, which, joined to his unsettled 
habits, had soon the effect of placing him in great difficul- 
ties and distress. It is a melancholy fact, that no inconsid- 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



erable portion of his History of Scotland was written in 
jail. And yet, in the midst of his sore straits and signal 
imprudence, this unfortunate man of genius continued to 
cherish warm affections, and a conscience tenderly alive, 
even with reference to the religious standard, to the true 
nature of his own aberrations. We find him on one occa- 
sion thus writing to his poor parents : — "I hope, by living 
more piously and carefully, by managing my income fru- 
gally, and appropriating a part of it to the service of you 
and my sisters, to reconcile your affections more entirely to 
me, and give you more comfort than I have yet done. O, 
forget and forgive my follies ; look on me as a son who will 
anxiously strive to comfort and please you, and, after all 
your misfortunes, to render the evening of your days as 
happy as possible." In another letter we find him thus 
speaking of his sisters : — " We must endeavor to settle 
our dear Grace comfortably in life, and to educate our dear 
little Betty and Mary aright." He brought a younger 
brother, a lad of promising talents, with him to Edinburgh, 
and supported him at college ; but he saw him sink into an 
early grave, a victim to consumption. He then brought a 
favorite sister to live with him. The seeds of the same 
insidious disease were fixed in her constitution also, and 
she too sank into the grave. For a considerable period 
his mind seemed almost unhinged by this latter shock : he 
quitted Edinburgh, and forgot his griefs for a time in a 
round of unceasing literary occupation in London. For 
several years he employed his pen in the service of the 
English publishers, and this much more profitably than he 
had ever been able to do in Scotland ; but his unsettled 
habits still clung by him, and kept him poor. His originally 
excellent constitution at length broke suddenly down, 
undermined by his arduous and long-protracted labors, ill 
relieved by life-wearing fits of dissipation ; and he again 
became the inmate of a jail. And here, in the midst of 
squalor and distress, enfeebled in body, and with a mind 
bowed down by want and despair, he could yet derive a 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



161 



glimmering of comfort from the fact that he had never 
employed his pen against religion. He was now on the 
confines of the eternal world, for he quitted his place of 
confinement only to die in a hospital. Who that is " him- 
self a sinner " shall venture to say that the mercy which 
found the penitent publican and the penitent thief did not 
visit his neglected death-bed, on which, alas! there was 
not a human friend to look ? Be that as it may, it is at 
least justice to record, that in the memorable debate on 
missions Robert Heron originated the motion which Dr. 
John Erskine was well content to second. 

His speech was characterized by clear good sense, with 
no assumption — for in his case the assumption could 
not have been other than offensive — of the devotional 
tone. It was a demonstrable truth, he said, that Chris- 
tianity had a happy influence on society ; that it con- 
tributed to the temporal prosperity of states no less than 
to the spiritual welfare of individuals. They had seen it 
gradually ameliorating the condition of the lower orders 
of society; it had extirpated, for instance, the domestic 
slavery of Europe, and taken its place in the very van of 
civilization, as the pioneer of improvement, whether intel- 
lectual or moral. If a spirit for its diffusion had now gone 
abroad, regulated by moderation and prudence, and if 
there existed at the same time circumstances more favor- 
able for giving that spirit effect than at any former period, 
— and he was prepared to show that that spirit had gone 
abroad, and that these circumstances did exist, — he really 
did not see that in the General Assembly of the Church 
of Scotland there could be any ground for difference of 
opinion on the subject. As for favorable circumstances, 
the extensive commerce of the country, and the consequent 
vastness of its naval resources, might be rationally re- 
garded as just the proper wings of missionary exertion. 
The country stood, too, on a high table-land of science 
and general knowledge, which could surely be made avail- 
able in favorably impressing, for the best of purposes, the 

14* 



162 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



ignorant natives of barbarous or semi-barbarous lands. As 
for the missionary spirit which had been awakened, could 
there possibly be a more gratifying or joyful circumstance 
to men who had been long complaining, of the progress of 
infidelity, and the consequent alarming decay of religion 
and good morals? It was a direct test of the vigor of 
religious feeling among them, and an evidence that infi- 
delity was not destined to prevail. It was surely a good 
spirit. If Christianity be an excellent thing in itself, it is 
an excellent thing also to spread it widely. Prophecy 
points to a time in which, from the rising to the setting 
sun, the Gentile nations shall become willing subjects of 
the Redeemer's kingdom. He doubted not that the diffu- 
sion of a very general missionary spirit would be one of 
the means through which so desirable a result was to be 
produced ; and who knew whether they might not, at that 
very time, be witnessing its first awakenings? At all 
events, he said, he could not avoid thinking that such a 
spirit should be encouraged, awake when it might, and 
that the only way for directing it well was just for men of 
character and abilities to take an active part in the exer- 
tions to which it led. The Church of Scotland had been 
complimented by a late distinguished philosopher, David 
Hume, as more favorable to the 'cause of deism than any 
other religious establishment. Now was the time for them 
to prove to the world that the compliment was undeserved, 
by zealously countenancing and assisting the honest en- 
deavors of their fellow Christians throughout the country. 
Otherwise he did not see how the clergy could expatiate 
with a good grace on the general indifference about 
religion, if they themselves set so palpable an example of 
that very indifferency. He concluded, however, by mov- 
ing, not that they should immediately adopt either of the 
overtures, but that they should appoint a committee for 
taking the subject of them into serious consideration, and 
on whose report the Assembly might afterwards act. A 
matter that promised so fair was at least worthy of exam- 



THE DEBATE ON" MISSIONS. 



163 



ination : justice demanded that they should deal with it 
according to its merits ; and it was imperatively their duty 
to ascertain what these merits were. 

As he sat down, Dr. Erskine and the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, 
of Gladsmuir, rose together. The venerable Doctor yielded 
to his opponent, at that time a young man, merely remark- 
ing, that for the present, at least, he had risen but to second 
the motion of the "gentleman opposite," Mr. Heron. The 
Rev. Mr. Hamilton then proceeded with his speech, — one 
of the most carefully written, apparently, of any delivered 
during the course of the debate, — one of the most extraor- 
dinary ever delivered anywhere. 



PART THIRD, 

" The bruit goeth," said De Bracy shrewdly to his com- 
panion in arms, the Templar, " that the most holy order 
of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a few infidels within 
its bosom." David Hume, intending on one occasion to 
be very complimentary, said nearly the same thing of the 
Church of Scotland. Was the compliment deserved, and, 
if so, what peculiar aspect did the infidelity of our Scottish 
clergy assume ? Was it gentlemanly and philosophic, like 
that of Hume himself? or highly seasoned with wit, like 
that of Voltaire? or dignified and pompous, like that.of 
Gibbon? or romantic and chivalrous, like that of Lord 
Herbert of Cherbury? or steeped in ruffianism and vul- 
garity, like that of Paine ? or redolent of nonsense, like 
that of Robert Owen? Or was it not rather of mark 
enough to have a character of its own ? — an infidelity that 
purported to be anti-Christian on Bible authority, — that, 
at least, while it robed itself in the proper habiliments of 
unbelief, took the liberty of lacing them with Scripture 
edgings? May we crave the attention of the reader, 
instead of directly answering any of these queries, to the 
facts and reasonings employed by the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, 



164 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



of Gladsmuir, in opposing the motion of poor Robert 
Heron. Mr. Hamilton was one of the most respectable 
Moderates of his time. His party shortly afterwards hon- 
ored him with the title of Doctor of Divinity ; and when 
searching out among their soundest men for a Moderator 
of the General Assembly, they made choice of him. For 
the sake of brevity, we have taken very considerable lib- 
erties with the speakers whose more striking or more 
characteristic ideas we have already submitted to the 
reader ; we have given the meaning, but not the words, 
of the first two, and only a few sentences of the last, in 
the language which he himself employed. But we shall 
take no such liberties with the speech of Mr. Hamilton. 
"We cannot give the whole of it, for it occupies ten rather 
closely-printed pages ; but our extracts will be all true to 
the original text. We could scarce translate the senti- 
ments expressed in it into our own language, however 
fairly, without subjecting ourselves to a charge of exagger- 
ation and injustice. 

" I should blush, Moderator," said the reverend gentleman, " to 
rise in this venerable Assembly for the purpose of opposing a plan 
so beneficent in its first aspect as the present, did not mature reflec- 
tion fully convince me that its principles are not really good, but merely 
specious; that no such honor could accrue to us from supporting 
and promoting it, as its friends among us have fondly anticipated ; 
and because no such benefits could in all probability result from the 
execution of it to mankind as they have no less fondly imagined 
and described. Such being my decided sentiments on the subject, 
I feel no reluctance to rise and state them fully. I feel this declara- 
tion, indeed, incumbent on me ; nor do I hesitate to say that, enter- 
taining these sentiments, it is as much my duty to wish that the house 
may be firm and unanimous in their opposition to these overtures, as it 
appeared the duty of those who were of a very different opinion to 
be actuated by a very different desire. To diffuse among mankind 
the knowledge of a religion which we profess to believe and revere, 
is doubtless a good and important work ; as to pray for its diffusion 
and to expect it is taught us in the sacred volume of Scripture. But 
as even the best things are liable to abuse, and as things the most 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 165 

* 

excellent are most liable to abuse, so in the present case it happens, 
that i" cannot otherwise consider the enthusiasm on this subject than as 
the effect of sanguine and illusive views, the more dangerous because 
the object is plausible." 

The reader will observe that the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, of 
Gladsmuir, was animated in his course by a strong sense 
^ of duty, and that he was not at all ashamed to boast, we 
make no doubt very honestly, and with all due modesty, 
of the sensitive tenderness of his conscience. He next 
proceeded to unfold the very occult principles on which 
his views of duty were based. 

" To spread abroad the knowledge of the gospel among barbarous 
and heathen nations," he remarked, " seems to me highly preposter- 
ous, in as far as it anticipates, nay, as it even reverses, the order of 
nature. Men must be polished and refined in their manners before 
they can be properly enlightened in religious truths. Philosophy 
and learning must in the nature of things take the precedence. 
Indeed, it should seem hardly less absurd to make revelation precede 
civilization in the order of time, than to pretend to unfold to a child 
the Principia of Newton ere he is made at all acquainted with the 
letters in the alphabet. These ideas seem to me alike founded in 
error, and therefore I must consider them both as equally romantic 'and 
visionary" 

Mr. Hamilton next deduced very fairly from these first 
principles, that not only are there many millions of men who 
have no opportunities of embracing the gospel, but who 
as certainly, as he himself very pointedly said, " ought to 
have none." The question of their responsibility naturally 
suggested itself to him ; and his benevolent mind found in 
solution the following singularly comfortable but not the 
less somewhat extraordinary doctrine : 

"To this question Scripture furnishes us with an answer, plain, 
natural, and just. We are in it told that ' a man is to be judged 
according to what he hath, not according to what he hath not.' We 
are, moreover, told by Paul to the same purpose ' that the Gentiles 



166 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



which have not the law are a law unto themselves ; ' and that ' they 
who are without law shall be judged without law/ So that the 

gracious declaration of Scripture ought to liberate from groundless 
anxiety the minds of those who stated in such moving language the 
condition of the heathen." 

He next proceeded to show how very excellent a condi- 
tion that of the heathen may be, and caught, as he warmed 
in his description, the very spirit of Rousseau. 

" Every state of society," he said, " has vices and virtues peculiar 
to itself, which balance each other, and are not incompatible with a 
large share of happiness. The untutored Indian or Otaheitan, 
whose daily toils produce his daily food, and who, when that is pro- 
cured, basks with his family in .the sun with little reflection or care, 
is not without his simple virtues. His breast can beat high with the 
feelings of friendship, his heart can burn with the ardor of patriotism ; 
and although his mind have not comprehension enough to grasp the 
idea of general philanthropy, yet the houseless stranger finds a sure 
shelter under his hospitable though humble roof, and experiences 
that, though ignorant of the general principle, his soul is attuned to 
the feelings on which its practice must generally depend. But go — 
engraft on his simple manners the customs, refinements, and, may I 
not add, some of the vices of civilized society, and the influence of 
that religion which you give as a compensation for the disadvantages 
attending such communications will not refine his morals nor insure his 
happiness. Of the change of manners, the effect produced shall 
prove a heterogeneous and disagreeable combination ; and of the 
change of opinion, the effects shall be a tormenting uncertainty 
respecting some things, a great misapprehension of others, and a 
misapplication perhaps of all." 

It was surely no wonder that the Rev. Mr. Hamilton 
should have exerted himself, out of a high sense of duty, 
to shield from the contamination of the gospel the virtues 
of so happy a state. He then proceeded, with all the 
mingled zeal and knowledge of the philosopher and " qual- 
ified minister," to show how very mischievous and danger- 
ous a thing this same gospel is, and how very terribly it 
would tend to brutalize savages. 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



167 



" When they shall be told," he said, " that a man is saved not by 
good works, but by faith, what will be the consequence ? We have 
too much experience of the difficulty of guarding our own people 
against the most deplorable misapplication of this principle ; though 
here the people are instructed by stated and regular pastors, though 
their minds have been early imbued with a pious and virtuous 
education, and though they are daily warned of the folly and danger 
of immorality under this pretext, we have too much experience of 
this fatal tendency at home, I say, with all our refinement, to enter- 
tain a rational doubt that the wild inhabitants of uncivilized regions 
would use it as a handle for the most flagrant violation of justice and 
morality" 

Mr. Hamilton, early in his speech, had admitted that, 
could Christian missionaries be possibly found of the right 
stamp, — men of mildly tempered zeal, — and that could a 
heathen country blessed with civilization, and thus fitted 
for receiving them, be also found, — though evidently, 
according to his estimate, it required no small amount 
of civilization to neutralize the evils of but a very small 
amount of Christianity, — still he would have no very 
serious objection against sending the mildly tempered 
missionaries to the highly civilized land. On thinking 
over the matter, hoAvever, he deemed the admission rather 
too great, and he thus proceeded to qualify it : 

" I formerly observed, that if missionaries were to be sent any- 
where, it ought to be to that country whose state of civil society 
should appear to be fitted to receive it and improve by revelation. 
But even supposing such a nation could be found, I should still have 
weighty objections against sending missionaries thither. Why should 
we scatter our forces and spend our strength in foreign service, when 
our utmost vigilance is required at home ? " 

The concluding stroke in the following passage will 
scarce fail in provoking the smile of the reader. Most 
involuntarily, evidently, did the admission which it con- 
veys fall from the speaker. It was a grace beyond the 
reach of art, — one at least which only our master dram- 
atists could have equalled : 



168 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



" What general," said Mr. Hamilton, " would desire to achieve 
distant conquests, and scatter for this purpose his troops over a 
distant and strange land, when the enemy's forces were already 
pouring into his own country, estranging the citizens from his inter- 
ests, and directing the whole force of his artillery against the walls 
of his capital. I cannot but reflect with surprise that the very men 
who in their sermons, by their speeches, by their publications, in short, 
by everything but their own lives, are anxious to show to the world the 
growing profligacy of the times at home, — I cannot but reflect with 
surprise that these are the very men most zealous in promoting this 
expedition abroad." 

We can give, as we have said, only a part of this speech; 
but the whole is infinitely curious. "We add just two sen- 
tences more — the concluding ones. 

" Upon the whole, while we pray for the propagation of the gospel, 
and patiently await its period, let us unite in resolutely rejecting these 
overtures. For my own part at least, I am obliged heartily to oppose 
the motion for a committee, and to substitute as a motion in its place, 
That the overtures from the Synods of Fife and Moray be immediately 
dismissed." 

Mr. Hamilton ceased speaking, and sat down. On the 
table of the General Assembly there always lies a Bible. 
It lay- there in even the darkest days of Moderate ascend- 
ency, and neither Hill nor Robertson had dared to recom- 
mend its removal. The venerable leader of Evangelism 
rose, and pointed to the table. "Moderator," he said, — 
and the brief and emphatic sentence that followed was 
one of those which men never forget, — "Moderator, Rax 
me that Bible." The Church of Scotland has her appro- 
priate Scripture motto, borne in reference to the burning- 
bush seen by the prophet in the wilderness. Were she not 
so well provided, — were the label still to inscribe, — we 
could imagine many worse suggestions than that it should 
be occupied by the laconic though quaintly-expressed 
request of Erskine — Rax me that Bible. 

The Rev. Mr. Hamilton, of Gladsmuir, in the very spirit 
of some of our contemporaries of the press, who lie, in the 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 169 

present controversy, out of sheer policy, and supply "a 
plentiful lack" of argument by a no less marked fertility 
of fabrication, had accused his opponents of dishonesty. 
Like a reverend gentleman of the present day, he had, no 
doubt, felt it to be his duty to make the charge. The har- 
vest of the preceding year had been scanty and inadequate. 
There obtained, in consequence, among the-poorer people, 
a very considerable amount of distress, which a collection 
— and, to the honor of British liberality, it had been a 
very ample one — had recently been made to relieve; 
and, though the money was not yet expended, many and 
urgent, he stated, were the demands upon it. "Sorry, 
therefore, was he to say, that in such circumstances of 
calamity some of his brethren, without consulting any 
ecclesiastical court, had not only joined missionary socie- 
ties, but had also set apart to their use the money collected 
for the poor. For such improper conduct," he added, 
"censure was by much too small a mark of disapproba- 
tion : it would, he doubted not, be a legal subject of penal 
prosecution." Dr. Erskine, old as he was, was not quite 
the man to suffer such a charge to pass unquestioned, and 
he now peremptorily demanded an explanation. The 
offence, he said, if really perpetrated, was a criminal 
offence, and ought to be dealt with as such ; but it would 
not do thus to wound the character of innocent men by 
vague insinuations regarding it. He was entitled, he said, 
to urge that the cases of misappropriation should be speci- 
fied, and the guilty individuals named ; and to urge 
further that, should the accusation prove an unfounded 
calumny, it should meet with the merited contempt. He 
paused for a reply ; and the pause was a long; and, to Mr. 
Hamilton^ a, singularly embarrassing one. But he at length 
stammered out an explanation. When he had said that 
money collected for the poor had been set apart for the 
use of missionary societies, he had not at all meant that 
money professedly collected for the poor had been set 
apart to their use. He had only meant that money col- 

15 



170 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



lected at church-doors for missionary societies had been 
thus appropriated to missionary purposes; and that all 
money collected at church-doors seemed to him to belong 
to the poor. An offence for which censure was too small 
a mark of disapprobation — which ought rather to be made 
a subject of penal prosecution — resolved itself simply into 
the fact, that Dr. Erskine, and several other ministers be- 
sides, had made church-door collections for missionary 
objects, with the full consent of their several sessions, with 
full and public intimation to their several congregations 
beforehand of the purposes to which the money was to be 
applied, and, withal, with fair deduction from the amount 
received of the average Sunday collections for the poor. 
Mocleratism in those days must surely have had a very 
nice perception of crime. 

The minister of Gladsmuir was, it is said, a man of mild 
and insinuating manners, — very much a gentleman of the 
old school, — fluent and bland, and who ever deemed it a 
solecism in politeness to lose temper in company. We 
have been told, however, that there were four little words 
which he could never contrive to hear unmoved: they 
brought a singularly unpleasant scene to his recollection, 
and operated on him like the sight of the bodkin on Sir 
Percy Shafton. If an acquaintance wished to see him 
redden and get silent in even his gayest and most con- 
versible moods, he had but to whisper in his ear, Rax 
me that Bible. He had studied, when a very young 
man, what Dr. Johnson had termed the art of "labored 
gesticulation," in the belief, doubtless, that his facts and 
his arguments w T ould be materially strengthened by the 
motions of his hands and his legs. He had had on this 
occasion much to prove; and therefore, to employ the 
language of the writer just named, he had "rolled his 
eyes, and puffed his cheeks, and spread abroad his arms, 
and stamped on the ground, and turned his eyes sometimes 
to the ceiling and sometimes to the floor." Dr. Erskine 
regretted that he could treat the Assembly to no such 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



171 



display of oratory. In his young clays, he said, the art had 
been very little studied in Scotland. He had passed 
through his curriculum at a time when there had been 
even no professor of rhetoric in any Scotch college ; his 
oratorical education had thus been sadly neglected; but 
he fain hoped the house would bear with him notwith- 
standing. He knew, he trusted, a little of church history, 
and a little of common sense ; and his arguments, if solid, 
might just be permitted to stand "for what they were 
worth, though un embellished by the flowers of imagery or 
the graces of style." 

He referred in terms of thorough approval to the senti- 
ments expressed by Mr. Heron : they had left him nothing 
to add, he said, regarding the civilizing influence of Chris- 
tianity, or in reference to the means possessed at that time 
by our country of spreading them abroad. He went on, 
therefore, to take a historical view of what had been 
already accomplished in the missionary field. He alluded 
to the missions of the Romish Church, and decided 
shrewdly on their character. They had left no traces 
behind them, he said, but traces of desolation and misery. 
It was a significant fact, too, that the countries chosen as 
the scene of them were either rich in mines, or amply fur- 
nished, through a fertile soil and genial climate, with the 
conveniences and delicacies of life. The fields selected 
for their operations were fields in which power or wealth, or 
at least a state of luxurious indulgence, might be attained 
to by the missionary ; and their entire history, constitut- 
ing, as it did, a record of rapine, cruelty, and secular aggran- 
dizement, gave evidence of a false, not of a true church. 
Still, however, when Papists, priding themselves on their 
own exertions, turned to Protestant churches, and asked, in 
derision, what they had done to spread abroad the faith 
which they professed to value, or whether their indifierency 
regarding its promulgation did not argue the weakness of 
their convictions of its truth, the question was by much 
too rational to be despised. And it was a question which 



172 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



could be answered only by deeds. Something had already 
been done by Protestants ; — more, as if to show that it 
was will, not ability, which was wanting, by one of the 
poorest and least considerable powers of Europe (Den- 
mark) than by all the other Protestant states put together. 
He referred to the signal labors of the Moravians, as re- 
corded by Crantz and Latrobe. He ran over the history 
of missions in connection with Great Britain ; that of the 
London Missionary Society, instituted by royal authority 
in the days of William, which, for many years after its 
institution, had communicated precious light to multi- 
tudes who would otherwise have remained in darkness. 
He referred to the society established early in the century 
in Scotland. He alluded briefly to the more recently 
established societies of our several large towns — socie- 
ties differently constituted, he said, from, each other, and 
composed of various materials, but of all of which he 
approved more or less, for of all the great object was the 
same ; and, however diverse might be the sects engaged in 
them, he deemed all points of inferior moment lost in the 
importance of the general cause. He paused briefly to 
consider the arguments of Mr. Hamilton. Was it really 
so absolutely necessary that learning and philosophy 
should precede the introduction of the gospel? He had 
been ever accustomed to consider it the peculiar glory of 
Christianity that it was adapted alike to the citizen and 
the savage ; that it not only enlightened spiritual darkness, 
but promoted also temporal civilization. The " testimony 
of the Lord maketh wise the simple? Christ, in the days 
of the apostles, had been made "all in all" to barbarians 
and Scythians. Would it have been so if to barbarians 
and Scythians Christ had not been preached? Was it 
not the theme of prophecy, that the benign influences 
of the gospel should smooth down the shag of human 
nature in realms the most barbarous and uncivilized ? 
How else did they interpret the bold metaphors of Isaiah ? 
" The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose ; and 



THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS 



173 



instead of the brier shall spring up the fir tree; and 
instead of the thorn, the myrtle tree." What was the 
testimony of history on the point ? Did not the Fathers 
of the second century boast that the Mauritanians, the 
Getuliaus. and other savage nations, had submitted to the 
government of Zion's King '? What was the experience 
of their own times? Had they heard nothing of the labors 
of Elliot, Brainerd, and the two Mayhews, among the 
fierce Indians of Xorth America"? Or had civilization 
visited the bleak coasts of Greenland and Labrador ere 
the Unites Fratrum had preached the gospel there with 
such signal success? Some of his younger brethren oppo- 
site, no doubt, deemed him a fanatic, and might care little, 
therefore, for his opinions : but the question was not one 
of opinion ; — he could assure them he was dealing in this 
matter with only solid and well authenticated facts. He 
alluded to the recent scarcity, and to Mr. Hamilton's terror 
of injuring the poor and exhausting the rich by their mis- 
sionary claims. What signs of scarcity, he asked, did the 
tables, equipage, or general economy of the opulent among 
them exhibit ? Had public calamity lessened either the 
power or inclination to extravagance? Was not rather 
the profusion in meats and drinks as marked, — were not 
the carriages in our streets as sumptuous, the attendants 
as numerous, — and were not theatres, assemblies, and 
card-tables, as much frequented as ever? "Besides," he 
added, " I early learned, and. though old, have not forgot 
the lesson, that the exercise of every habit naturally tends 
to strengthen and improve it ; and therefore am I inclined 
to think that a wish to benefit our fellow-creatures in 
distant regions, and an occasional donation in their behalf, 
instead of lessening, will serve to increase the compas- 
sion of the givers for the needy at home, and thus widen, 
instead of contracting, the channels of general benevo- 
lence." He concluded by giving expression to his cordial 
approbation of the motion of Mr. Heron, which he had 
already seconded. 

w 



174 



THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. 



The Rev. Dr. Erskine was succeeded by the Rev. Dr. 
Alexander Carlyle, minister of Inveresk ; and as the speech 
of this gentleman was a short and very extraordinary one, 
we shall give it entire. Dr. Carlyle was, of all his party, 
the boldest and most uncompromising advocate of the 
theatre, — one of the truly liberal in the case of Home and 
his tragedy, — in short, a man enlightened enough in his 
views of dramatic representation to have almost wiped 
away the stain of bigotry and narrowness from an entire 
Church. But there is, alas ! no perfection in whatever is 
human ; and there were matters in which even lie, with all 
his general liberality, could be narrow and bigoted. He 
exhausted the charities of his nature in tolerating balls 
and the theatre; and for the gospel of Christ and the 
cause of its extension he had no tolerance and no charity. 

" Moderator," he said, " my reverend brother, whose universal 
charity is so well known to me, has just been giving a new and 
extraordinary instance of it ; — no less than proposing as a model for 
our imitation the zeal for propagating the Christian religion displayed 
by Roman Catholics. When we see the tide of infidelity and licen- 
tiousness so great, and so constantly increasing, in our own land, it 
would indeed be highly preposterous to carry our zeal to another 
and a far distant one. When our religion requires the most unre- 
mitted and strenuous defence against internal invasion, it would be 
highly absurd to think of making distant converts by external mis- 
sionaries. This is indeed beginning where we should end. I have, 
on various occasions, during a period of almost half a century, had the 
honor o f being a member of the General Assembly. Yet this is the 
first time I remember to have ever heard such a proposal made, and I 
cannot help also thinking it the worst time. As clergymen, let us 
pray that Christ's kingdom may come, as we are assured it shall come 
in the course of Providence. Let us, as clergymen, also instruct our 
people in their duty ; and, both as clergymen and as Christians, let 
our light so shine before men, that, seeing our good works, they may 
be led to glorify our heavenly Father. This is the true mode of 
propagating the gospel ; this is far preferable to giving countenance 
to & plan which has well been styled visionary. I, therefore, do heartily 
second the motion made some time ago by my young friend Mr. 
Hamilton, that the overtures be immediately dismissed." 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



175 



PART FOURTH. 

The characters in the debate on missions stand out in 
bold relief. There is a dramatic force and picturesqueness 
abont them. Evangelism had to contend against the cur- 
rent of the age : it was alike denounced by the worlds of 
literature and fashion. The politically powerful exerted 
themselves to crush it as mischievous ; the gay and dissi- 
pated denounced it as morose and intolerant ; the widely- 
spread skepticism of the period characterized it as irrational 
and absurd ; historians had written whole volumes to tra- 
duce and vilify it ; and genius had striven to render it 
ridiculous in song. It behooved its more strenuous as- 
sertors, therefore, to be men of at least some force of char- 
acter; and force of character never exists without those 
accompanying peculiarities which in the drama of life con- 
stitute well-marked individuality. Moderatism, on the 
other hand, enjoyed singular advantages, though of an 
opposite nature, of developing itself in its true proportions. 
It had not, as now, tamely and timidly to conform to the 
influence of the pressure from without; there was scarce 
any pressure from without at the time : it could venture 
on being well-nigh whatever it wished to be. And hence 
strongly marked character on the part of Moderatism also. 
From diametrically opposite but equally efficient causes, 
specimens of both parties, singularly characteristic, were 
exhibited in this debate. Erskine, Hill, Heron, Hamilton, 
the simple-hearted clergyman of Alves, and the venerable 
minister of Leith, appear all before us like the well-drawn 
dramatis personal of a masterly play. But of all the char- 
acters exhibited, perhaps none were better marked than 
that of the last speaker, Dr. Carlyle. He was a Moderate 
on a larger scale than could be produced in the altered 
atmosphere of the present day. In digging him out, we 
feel as if we had fallen somehow on a fossil Moderate ; 
and are struck, in contemplating the mighty fragments, 
with the degeneracy of his comparatively dwarfish sue- 



176 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



cessors. Dr. Bryce planted astride the shoulders of Dr. 
Cook would fail to overtop a single Dr. Alexander Carlyle. 

" Both as clergymen and Christians let our light so shine 
before men," said the reverend Doctor, " that, seeing our 
good works, they may be led to glorify our heavenly 
Father. This is the true mode of propagating the gospel ; 
this is far preferable to giving countenance to a plan which 
has well been styled visionary." Now, it is surely natural 
to ask, after what particular fashion was the light of the 
Rev. Dr. Carlyle made to shine before men ? Or, what 
was its character as light ? Or, was it light at all ? We 
have already alluded to his liberality of opinion respecting 
theatrical representation. Milton had his prejudices against 
play-acting parsons, — "men who shamefully prostituted 
their ministry," he said, " by writhing and unboning their 
clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of 
Trinculos, buffoons, and bawds." Not such, however, was 
the feeling of Dr. Carlyle: he was more than tolerant of 
play-acting parsons. He was a play-acting parson himself, 
On one occasion at least, when a select batch of Moderate 
divines rehearsed the tragedy of Douglas in the house of 
an Edinburgh actress, the Doctor, a large, dignified-looking 
man, well-known among the wags of the bar as Jupiter 
Tonans, performed to admiration the part of Old JVbrval. 
Dr. Hugh Blair personified the Lady Anna. Carlyle, from 
being an actor himself, proceeded next to be an instructor 
of actors. The Edinburgh playhouse of those days, as 
the reader of Ferguson's " Burlesque Elegy " must needs 
remember, was in the Canongate. The manager was a Mr. 
Digges, and one of the prettiest of his staff was a Mrs. 
Ward, an actress of considerable ability, but, as was com- 
mon at the time to the profession, of equivocal charac- 
ter ; and poor Jupiter Tonans, in urging his instructions, 
"had made his light so shine" that the tongue of scandal 
became busy. The case, among other matters, was brought 
before the Presbytery of Edinburgh; and the reverend 
Doctor, who seems to have been a man of infinite frank- 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



177 



ness, to save the Presbytery the trouble of leading proof, 
at once acknowledged that he had been not only in taverns 
with the actors, but also occasionally in Mr. Digges' house, 
hearing parts of the tragedy rehearsed by Mrs. Ward and 
the others; but that on no occasion had he ever ate or 
drank with the lady, or conversed with her farther than in 
agreeing or disagreeing to what was said about the play." 
This was of course satisfactory ; for who could know so 
well as the Doctor himself? When the tragedy came at 
length to be acted, some of the clerical friends of the 
author were led, by the interest they felt in its success, to 
linger about the house, without actually appearing in the 
boxes. Hence the point of a stanza, the production of 
some Edinburgh wit of the period : 

" Hid close in the green-room some clergymen lay, 
Good actors themselves, — their icTxole lives a play." 

Dr. Carlyle, however, with a few others, had more courage. 
He appeared openly among the audience, armed with a 
bludgeon. In the course of the evening, two wild young 
fellows, reckless with intoxication, forced themselves into 
his box ; and the Doctor, though known, says one of his 
biographers, from "his repeated exertions in favor of the 
law of patronage, and his strong dislike of fanatics, by the 
title of the preserver of the Church from fanaticism" stood 
up at once in the character of a jSTon-Intrusionist. He was 
perfectly sober at the time, and of great muscular strength ; 
and succeeded, to the great delight of the lesser gods in 
the gallery, after a slight struggle, in ejecting both the in- 
truders. Though a leading and influential man among his 
party, most of them seem to have regarded his character 
as somewhat too extreme. When appointed to preach 
before the Lord High Commissioner, in 1760, there was a 
solemn dissent entered on the part of some of his brethren, 
which still exists in the records of the Church ; " and the 
case," says Morren, " is the only one on record in which the 



178 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



preacher proposed by the committee was objected to in the 
Assembly." Nearly thirty years afterwards, however, and 
but a short time before the debate on missions took place, 
he very nearly carried the principal clerkship in a struggle 
of unprecedented keenness. He shone as a wit; and suc- 
ceeded at times in raising the laugh against Evangelism, by 
his narratives of the opinions entertained on doctrine or 
church policy by the fisher population of his parish. Some 
Janet Skatecreel, or Donald Mucklebacket, had come, he 
had found, to the same conclusion on a debated point with 
the Witherspoons and Erskines, his opponents ; and he 
rarely failed in exciting the merriment of the brethren with 
whom he voted, by his ludicrous representations of the 
evangelic prejudices of Janet or Donald. There were 
cases, however, in which the laugh was turned very conclu- 
sively against himself. He had been all his life long a keen 
supporter of Toryism. In his exertions to support the 
policy of Pitt and Dundas, he had, to employ the language 
of one of his brethren, who spoke both for the Doctor and 
himself, " risked even the friendship of his flock, and his 
own usefulness as a pastor among them." He had taken a 
deep interest in the bill proposed in 1793 for the augmen- 
tation of ministers' stipends. It had been set aside, to Iris 
signal mortification, by his friends the Tories; and the 
reverend Doctor, in the ensuing Assembly, proved unable 
to conceal his disappointment and chagrin. He went 
the length even of charging the ministry with "ingrati- 
tude to their best friends," and in a style fully more 
lachrymose than pathetic; and the complaint was ludi- 
crously paraphrased, in reply, by the singularly able and 
accomplished Dr. Bryce Johnstone, in the words of Balaam's 
ass, " Am I not thine ass, on whom thou hast ridden ever 
since I was thine until this day?" Dr. Johnstone followed 
up the allusion in a vein of the happiest ridicule, amid the 
irrepressible laughter of the house ; the hint was caught 
by the eccentric Kay ; and in his caricature, "faithful ser- 
vice rewarded" vol. n. p. 118, the reader may see a neatly 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



179 



etched bead of Jupiter Tonans attached to a long-bodied, 
crocodile-looking jackass, bestridden by the late Lord Mel- 
ville. In his latter days Dr. Carlyle tired, it is said, not 
only of preaching sermons, but also of hearing them 
preached. He furnished himself with an assistant ; and 
leaving him to his prayers, as Hume did La Roche, he 
might himself be seen almost every fine Sunday, during 
the time of divine service, sauntering along the Mussel- 
burgh racecourse. The light of the reverend Doctor seems 
to have been a beacon light ; it shone before men to show 
them, not the course which they ought to pursue, but the 
course which they were by all means to avoid. 

He spoke just two sentences more during the course of 
the debate on missions. Principal Hill had made a long 
speech, which occupies nearly twelve pages of the printed 
report, in which he at once strenuously labored to defeat 
the missionary cause, and to deprecate, by a vein of gen- 
eral though singularly inconclusive concession in its favor, 
the odium which might, he feared, attach to such a course. 
Dr. Carlyle had no such fears, and no respect, apparently, 
for the tone of timid conciliation which they inspired. 
Though complimented by the Principal, who quoted his 
observations as excellent, and referred to him as his revered 
father, the old man rose in evident impatience as the 
younger concluded, and addressed the moderator. 

" Moderator," he said, " a motion was some time ago made ' to 
dismiss the overtures,' and I insist the first thing to be done is to con- 
sider of this. We may then judge t of the propriety of the recom- 
mendation and resolutions proposed by the reverend Principal ; but 
I desire that we may first proceed to dismiss the overtures" 

He might have been more tolerant of the concessions of 
Principal Hill. They were not intended to do either him 
or his cause any harm. Is the reader acquainted with Vol- 
taire's story of the two Roman Catholic missionaries who 
quarrelled at Pekin ? A Jansenist and Jesuit, both brimful 



180 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



of zeal for Mother Church and the conversion of the 
Chinese, and both equally hostile, the one to the heresies 
of Jansenius, and the other to the policy of Loyola, had 
met in their rounds within the precincts of the Celestial 
Court. The Jesuit denounced the five propositions, and 
asserted the doctrines of Habert. The Jansenist also de- 
nounced the five propositions, and repeated the sarcasms 
of Pascal. They became angry and loud, and cuffed and 
scratched, and tore one another's beards, and the noise of 
the fray reached the ears of the emperor. " Clap up these 
French Bonzes in prison," said the great-grandchild of the 
sun, — " clap them up instantly in prison : could they not 
have staid and quarrelled in their own country?" — "And 
how long, sire, shall we keep them there ? " asked a man- 
darin in attendance. " Till they hav^ fully agreed," said 
the emperor. " Alas, sire ! " replied the mandarin, who 
knew the sort of persons with whom he had to deal,- — 
" alas, sire ! in that case you condemn them to prison for 
life, for they will never agree? Is the reader prepared to 
find the hinging point of the joke of Voltaire converted 
into a serious argument against missions by Principal Hill? 
Such, however, was the case. It had been stated by Dr. 
Erskine that there were various sects engaged in the 
societies, in whose welfare, deeming all points of inferior 
moment lost in the importance of the general cause, he felt 
so warm an interest. It had been asserted further, on the 
same principle, in the address of the Edinburgh Society, 
— a document characterized by the reverend Principal as 
breathing only " a spirit of conceit" and fitted merely to 
excite feelings of " compassion bordering on contempt" — 
that they sought not to " export the shibboleth of a party." 
The sectarian was to be sunk in the Christian. He had 
found, withal, in the society's regulations, that " every mis- 
sionary to be ordained, after being approved of by the 
society, should be remitted for ordination to the particular 
religious connection to which he belonged." His reflec- 
tions on these several points we give in the words of the 
report : 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



181 



" Alas ! " he exclaimed, " is this the whole extent of the liberality 
so much professed ? Is this the sense in which ' the shibboleth of a 
party ' is disclaimed ? What can be more palpably plain than that 
this remission of the approved missionaries for ordination to the 
particular sect to which they belong (and we find that all sects are 
invited to join in the undertaking), is, in fact, sending out ' the shib- 
boleth of a party ' in its strictest sense — is sending out men warm 
with the deep impression of party, and is enlisting them in hostile 
bands against each other on the very eve of departure. How soon 
their polemical controversies may burst forth I know not ; but when 
they do burst forth, wretched must be the state of the half-converted 
heathen whose spiritual darkness shall only have given place to light 
rendered horrible by the shapeless phantoms of gloomy doubt and 
degrading superstition. On account of the missionaries themselves, 
too, when these controversies shall have appeared, the societies at 
home may too late be led to deplore their hazardous and rash 
attempts — may too late discover that, besides sowing misery where 
they promised happiness, missionaries have gone to fight, not merely by 
argument, but even — thought full of horror ! — to fight 

BY CUTTING ONE ANOTHER^ THROATS IN THE BATTLES OF 

religion on a foreign shore ! If the societies recoil with 
horror from such an anticipated, let them be careful in due time to 
prevent this realized, consequence." 

What, compared to this, was the ingenious fiction of 
Voltaire ! The reverend Principal, as second minister of 
St. Andrew's, was of course a member of the Synod of 
Fife — one of the two synods from which the overtures 
under discussion had been sent to the Assembly. Why 
omit, as it turned out he had done, opposing the trans- 
mission of the Fife overture in the synod? Why not 
crush the snake in the egg? The reasons why, as stated 
by himself, are sufficiently characteristic. The overture, as 
originally drawn up, bore a preamble recommendatory of 
missionary societies. It stated "that a desirable spirit 
had of late appeared to pervade a numerous body of our 
fellow-Christians, -in various parts of this island, for propa- 
gating the religion of Jesus Christ." We again return to 
the report : 

16 



182 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



" Such, sir," said the reverend Principal, " was originally the sub- 
stance of the preamble to this overture, and I declared, on hearing 
it, what I have already repeated, that should any such preamble 
have appeared in the overture, I should have strenuously opposed and 
divided the synod upon it. As it pleased the gentleman who pro- 
posed it, however, to leave out this highly objectionable clause, I saw 
no reason for refusing my assent to it as it at present stands. The 
overture seemed to have a pious object in view ; and, if not promis- 
ing to be useful, seemed at least to promise to be innocent, in its effects. 
In its present form the Assembly may take it up or not, just as they 
think proper. It is clothed in expressions so general and vague, — 
it recommends an object so truly Christian and war- 
ranted by Scripture prophecy, yet so great and comprehensive in 
its aspect, involving so many perplexing considerations, and promis- 
ing such uncertain consequences, — that I am inclined to 
think the Assembly are not called on to consider it, but might 
simply dismiss it at once, as wanting a specific object." 

Great truths are laid open at times by the merest acci- 
dents; and one of these, stuck in, evidently all involunta- 
rily, amid the tortuous syllogisms of the reverend Principal, 
we find in the passage just quoted. The Fife overture 

"RECOMMENDED AN OBJECT SO TRULY CHRISTIAN, THAT 
HE WAS INCLINED TO THINK THE ASSEMBLY MIGHT DIS- 
MISS it at once." If the one leader originated in this 
debate a saying which might well be adopted as the 
watchword of his party, we think the other was no less 
successful in behalf of his. 

But the reverend Principal was not equally open 
throughout. Too frequently are the deliberations of pub- 
lic bodies degraded by a mean spirit of trick. Wisdom 
and honesty to decide regarding the fair, the good, the pru- 
dent, are what the exigency demands; but some influential 
leader rises, and substitutes cunning instead. His object 
is not to secure, but prevent, the adoption of the proper 
course ; and this object he pursues by means which, con- 
sorting entirely with the character of what he intends, 
are just and honorable in but the same degree as those 
employed by the gamester when he loads his dice. A 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



183 



complete list of the various stratagems resorted to in such 
cases would be a long one — longer by far than Bacon's 
catalogue of the " wares of the cunning man." Hints for 
half a volume could have been picked up at the last Gen- 
eral Assembly from the speeches of some four or five Mod- 
erate elders alone. JSTor, as we have already shown, did 
the debate on missions lack its quota of trick on the same 
side. One notable stratagem we have described as virtu- 
ally deciding the fate of the two overtures, by binding 
them together. Mr. Hamilton resorted to another, when, 
in the hope of blackening the character of his opponents, 
and thus creating a prejudice against both them and their 
cause, he charged them with dishonestly appropriating to 
the support of their missionary schemes money collected 
for the poor. Dr. Hill was more ingenious ; not only, he 
asserted, were missionary societies not good, but even 
those who most strenuously defended them seemed fully 
aware of the fact. We again quote : 

"My reverend father, Dr. Erskine," he said, " has only touched 
their surface with delicacy and tenderness ; for his sagacity and 
discernment must have led him to perceive that they would not bear a 
more critical inspection. Nay, he even has gone so far as to say that 
he approves of all the societies which have been formed, ' more or 
less,' — a confession lohich seems equivalent to his owning that he does 
not approve entirely of any" 

The hit was only indifferently successful. Dr. Erskine 
at once characterized the inference of the Principal as 
unwarranted. He had not veiled, he said, through feelings 
of delicacy or tenderness, as had been insinuated, any dis- 
approval of the missionary societies of the country ; for he 
did not disapprove of them, but very much the reverse. 
If he had spoken obscurely regarding them, it was unwit- 
tingly, not from design ; and some portion of obscurity, in 
a speech wholly unstudied, might, he hoped, be excused. 
In a second stratagem, of a still worse character, Principal 
Hill was entirely successful. 



184 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



The war of the first French Revolution was raging at 
the period of the debate, and the democratic principles 
caught by the people of Britain, as if by infection, from 
their volatile neighbors, were now undergoing a course of 
gradual absorption, overmastered by the intensely national 
spirit which both the reverses and triumphs of the conflict 
served to awaken. Still, however, the pest had not been 
altogether extirpated. " Our neighbor's house was in 
flames, and it was well," according to Burke, " that the 
engines should occasionally play on our own." Only two 
years had elapsed since the trials of Muir, Palmer, and 
Gerald had taken place ; and Braxfield had not yet ceased 
reiterating his somewhat brutal joke, that our democrats 
" would a' be muckle the better o' being hanged." Even 
several years later, the present Lord President of the Court 
of Session, then Lord Advocate, could officially intimate 
to the sheriff of Banffshire that a farmer of that county, 
who had dismissed his servant for neglecting his work in 
attending a volunteer review, should be " stigmatized and 
punished by the scorn and contempt of all respectable 
men ; " and instruct, further, " that on the first French- 
man landing in Scotland he [the farmer] should be imme- 
diately apprehended as a suspected person;" and that in 
the event of his property being destroyed by either the 
enemy or the king's troops, " care should be taken to 
prevent his receiving any compensation for the loss." The 
temper of the time was one of fear and suspicion ; minds 
of fully the ordinary strength seemed unhinged^ by the 
terror of revolution ; and, to excite their rage and hatred 
against any newly established popular society, it seemed 
but necessary to hint that there might possibly be some- 
thing democratic in its character or tendencies. There 
were not a few of this conspiracy-dreaded class present at 
the time in the Assembly, mostly gentlemen of the law; 
and the reverend Principal thus proceeded to enlist their 
fears full against the missionary cause. The stratagem 
had at least the merit of being consummately ingenious, 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



185 



and, as we have already said, and shall afterwards show, it 
was entirely successful. 

"Besides the considerations," he said, "which lead us to augur 
unfavorably of these societies from the circumstances I have enu- 
merated, there is one argument, drawn from a consideration of a 
much more important nature in itself, because threatening much more 
awful and extreme effects than even these, not, indeed, to the heathen 
or the missionaries, but to this country, to society at large. The politi- 
cal aspect of the times, marked with the turbulent and seditious 
attempts of the evil designing or the deluded against our happy 
constitution, — against the order of everything we possess and hold 
dear to us, whether as citizens or as men, — renders it incumbent on 
me to state, that I observe with serious regret not only many of the 
striking outlines, but even many of the most obnoxious expressions, 
or expressions similar to those which have been held with affected 
triumph in the lately suppressed popular assemblies." 

The Principal goes on to render the assertion as plausible 
as possible, by quotations from the regulations and prelim- 
inary address of the society over which the venerable Dr. 
Erskine presided. His art in twisting a meaning seems to 
have been very considerable indeed. 

" In the letter I have so often referred to," continued the Princi- 
pal, " it is said, ' They [Christians] perceive that their strength has 
been impaired by division ; that the most zealous exertions of par- 
ticular denominations have only had a partial and temporary effect ; 
and that by union alone one obvious cause of failure may be com- 
pletely removed. They wish, therefore, to make a grand, unanimous 
effort ; to combine the wisdom, the prayers, the influence, and the 
wealth of all their brethren in all parts of the nation, and even to 
produce a general movement of the Church upon earth ! ' Again, 
' While we rejoice in these associations as proofs that the desire to 
propagate the gospel is at present very generally excited, we beg 
leave strongly to recommend united exertions ; and we submit to all 
such societies in Scotland, whether it will not be better to cooperate 
than to act alone. Let us join all our resources, and proceed with 
vigor. From harmonious beginnings at home we may perhaps be 
enabled to go on to an enlarged concurrence with similar societies 

16* 



186 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



at a distance, and in our day to revive something of the liberal spirit 
of primitive times, when the multitude of them that believed were 
of one heart and of one soul.' And yet again, ' The society shall 
be willing to correspond with all societies and individuals who may 
have the same grand object in view, and shall either act by them- 
selves or cooperate with others, as circumstances shall determine.' " 

When ever before were there more terrible proofs of 
conspiracy adduced ! and was not Principal Hill quite 
justified in alleging that these quotations were "fully 
sufficient, without any addition or much comment, to war- 
rant" him "in calling those societies highly dangerous, in 
their tendency, to the good order of society at large?" 
True, it seemed a rather unlucky circumstance for his case, 
that men such as Dr. Erskine were their leading members. 
But then, with "new members," he said, "new views would 
be introduced ; nor was it unreasonable to dread that their 
common fund should be perverted from its original channel, 
and be made the means, along with the other obnoxious 
circumstances mentioned, of stirring up temporal strife, 
instead of promoting spiritual peace" 



PART FIFTH. 

We are told by Plutarch, of the Romans who besieged 
Syracuse, that after they had seen a few dozen of their 
galleys pitched into the air from the ends of huge beams, 
and a few hundreds of their legionaries crushed into the 
earth by immense rocks, they became so sadly afraid of the 
master magician who defended the city, that if they only 
spied a small cord or piece of wood above the walls, they 
straightway took to their heels, crying out that "Archi- 
medes was going to let fly some terrible engine at them." 
A somewhat similar terror seems to have possessed the 
more strenuous supporters of the Pitt and Dundas policy 
in our own country, for a few years before and after the 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



18T 



period of the debate on missions ; and it was to this feeling 
of fear and suspicion, as we have said, that Principal Hill 
deemed it wisdom to appeal. At the distance of nearly 
half a century, when men's minds have cooled down, it 
strikes one with astonishment to see how very minute the 
cord sometimes was, and how very slender the beam, that 
filled men of at least ordinary good sense with dread and 
suspicion. Scarce an institution could be established, on 
however limited a scale, whether economic, educational, or 
religious, that some one or other did not decry as a revo- 
lutionary engine. Some became mortally afraid of benefit 
societies, some of prayer-meetings, some of Sunday schools. 
Masonic fraternities were deemed hotbeds of sedition every- 
where: even parish schools came to be suspected. A 
country magistrate of the period, naturally a benevolent 
man, but rabid in his dread of revolution, was presiding 
on one occasion, in one of our northern towns, on a trial 
of some score of ragged urchins, who, in sacking a piece of 
planting of its rowans, had broken a few of the young- 
trees. He had gone through the case with great good 
humor; there was nothing revolutionary in it. In pro- 
posing, however, that the parents of the culprits should 
become bound for their behavior in the future, he was 
seconded by a brother magistrate of the town, who re- 
marked, half in joke, that they had better also bind the 
young fellows themselves, so far as a promise could bind 
them ; and who, aware of their literary qualifications, 
actually wrote out for them a declaration of non-aggression 
for the time coming, which he asked them to sign. Glad 
of the opportunity of showing they could write, they came 
forward one by one, and adhibited their names, each suc- 
ceeding boy in a style more clerkly than the boy that had 
gone before. The country magistrate stood aghast, for 
he saw conspiracy and sedition in the accomplishment. 
"What! what! what!" he exclaimed, his temper giving 
way for the first time during the course of the trial, " all 
these ragamuifins able to write! This must be put an 



188 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



instant stop to ! In a few years hence we shall see them 
all hung for high treason." 

One of the most extreme cases illustrative of the spirit 
of the time was perhaps that of the late Rev. Mr. Lapslie, 
of Campsie, — a gentleman who first introduced himself 
to terms of familiar intimacy with the unfortunate and not 
over-prudent Muir, of Huntshill, by the professed liberality 
of his political principles, and who, animated by his detes- 
tation of democracy and his hope of a pension, volunteered 
afterwards his evidence against him, but whose testimony, 
from the utterly infamous nature of his conduct, could not 
be received. The history of this man would exhibit Mod- 
eratism in its worst and most extreme phase. It may be 
deemed unfair, indeed, to select the atrocities of one indi- 
vidual as the characteristics of a party. If, however, that 
individual was followed by his party; if, in cases of 
acquittal for scandalous crimes, in which no merely secular 
court of the period would or could have concurred, they 
suffered him to act as their leader ; if his worst peculiar- 
ities were but exaggerations of their own ; if, instead of 
branding his conduct and casting him out of their society, 
they were content to regard him as a useful and active 
partisan; if, in short, they homologated his actings by 
making them to no very limited extent their own, — they 
must be content that he should be regarded as at least an 
extreme specimen of their class. For several years after 
entering on his charge, Mr. Lapslie bore the common 
Moderate character. He was known to be no bigot. He 
appeared occasionally in the boxes of the Glasgow theatre, 
and had, it was said, a happy knack of rendering himself 
agreeable at the tables of men in the upper ranks. On the 
determination of government to crush the revolutionary 
spirit among the people by a series of state prosecutions, 
the incumbent of Campsie sprung up at once into notoriety, 
and volunteered, as we have said, his testimony against 
Muir. He had been over-zealous, however, for the full ac- 
complishment of what he had purposed. He had attended 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



189 



the sheriffs in their rounds, collecting evidence. He had 
even hinted to some of the witnesses, by way of refreshing 
their memories, that " berths might be provided for them 
under government." When the trial came on, his testimony 
was objected to, on the score that he was a party deeply 
interested in the case ; and, to his surprise and signal 
mortification, the objection was sustained by the public 
prosecutor. Muir, in addressing the jury empanelled to 
try him, solemnly pledged himself that, if acquitted, he, 
in turn, would become Mr. Lapslie's prosecutor, and prove 
against him, by a cloud of witnesses, practices — nay, 
crimes — which he at that stage forbore to characterize. 
Though thus rejected as a witness, however, the minister 
was not altogether disappointed. His services, though not 
very honorable, had been at least very zealously tendered : 
they had attracted the notice of Pitt ; and a pension was 
granted him almost immediately after the trial, which, 
considerably more than thirty years subsequent, his widow 
continued to enjoy. On the introduction of the militia 
act, so unpopular in Scotland, Mr. Lapslie exerted himself 
to give it effect in his own parish of Campsie with such 
hearty good-will, that some of his parishioners, to show 
their gratitude and respect, set fire to his outhouses in the 
night-time, and burnt them to the ground. He distin- 
guished himself above all his fellows by his active hostility 
to Sunday schools and home and foreign missions, "believ- 
ing them, in common with many other members of the 
Church," says a writer of the present day, who has sketched 
an outline of his biography, " to be deeply tainted with 
democracy." The accusers of our Saviour charged him 
with rebellion against Caesar; we question whether there 
were any of them more in earnest than Mr. Lapslie. The 
latest notice of this singular divine which we have yet 
seen is to be found in "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk." 
We there find him drawn as a gray-headed old man, 
addressing the General Assembly in strains the most 
impassioned: "tearing his waistcoat open, baring his 



190 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



breast as if he had scars to show ; bellowing, sobbing, 
weeping;" and finally sitting down, "trembling all to his 
finger-ends, like an exhausted Pythoness." What was it 
that had moved the old man, and why did he rave, and 
weep, and shake his gray locks? He had been engaged, 
soul, body, and spirit, in the defence of a Moderate clergy- 
man accused of " illicit intercourse with his housekeeper," 
and who fared none the worse in consequence of having 
his case tried at a period when it was impossible, in the 
General x^ssembly, to convict Moderate ministers of crime. 

We have been indulging in an episode; but it is one 
which serves to illustrate the temper of the time, and 
enables us to add to our series of sketches an additional 
portrait. Moderatism has often pointed to its men of 
science and literature — its poets, philosophers, and histo- 
rians ; the memory of such long outlives that of their 
humbler contemporaries. But it is well to remember that 
it was not of literature and science that the staple of the 
party was composed. It is well to enter into an examina- 
tion of its coarser ingredients; to know somewhat not 
only of the gifted leaders who contended against the cause 
of missions and Sunday schools, but also of the humbler 
men-at-arms who fought under them with a zeal and hearti- 
ness in no respect inferior to their own. The deep cloud 
of moral and spiritual death which for a century brooded 
over our country, withering every blossom of hope and 
promise, had its upper sunlit folds of purple and gold, to 
catch and charm the eye of the distant spectator; but to 
know it in its true character, it was necessary to descend 
to where its lower volumes brooded over the blighted 
surface, and there to acquaint one's self with its sulphure- 
ous stench, its mildew-dispensing damps, its chills, and its 
darkness. 

Some such introduction, too, is necessary to enable the 
reader either to enter fully into the character of Principal 
Hill's stratagem, or rightly to appreciate the spirit of the 
very singular political speech which it elicited. The 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



191 



speaker was a young advocate named David Boyle, ruling 
elder for the burgh of Irvine. We are inclined to hold 
that he could have been animated by no real zeal against 
missions ; that it was his head, not his heart, which was 
at fault. A bit of cord hung over the wall; a rjiece 
of wood had appeared ; the wily Principal had called 
out, "A revolutionary engine ! a revolutionary engine ! " 
There were certainly many playing off at the time ; and 
the zealous advocate, infected by the general terror, had 
taken the representation too readily on trust. We insert 
his speech entire : 

" I rise, Moderator, impressed with a sense of the alarming and 
dangerous tendency of the measures proposed in the overtures on your 
table, — overtures which I cannot too strongly, ichich the House cannot 
too strongly, oppose, and which, I trust, all the loyal and well-affected 
members will be unanimous in opposing. If, however, I should stand 
single with the two reverend Doctors and the gentleman who made 
the motion, I should this night go down to divide the House. Sir, 
numerous societies of people are at all times alarming ; but at this 
time particularly so, whatever be the professions on which they are 
formed, or the pretexts they hold out to the world. The general 
professed object of the present societies is, indeed, good, and at a 
proper season would merit our countenance ; but there is nothing 
besides this general object at all good about them ; all the other circum- 
stances respecting them are bad : for I am free to assert — and I will 
maintain it. in the face of any member of this Assembly — that all the 
societies ichich have of late years existed in this country have been more 
or less connected with politics. Yes, sir, I do say that the associations 
of the people formed in various parts of the kingdom to petition for 
the abolition of the slave-trade, however good their design, and 
whether or not immediately arising from politics, did, at any rate, lay 
the foundation of the political societies which have since disturbed the 
peace and tranquillity of the country, and have cost so much trouble 
and difficulty to be suppressed. Still, however, the people meet 
under the pretext of spreading Christianity among the heathen. 
Observe, sir, they are affiliated, they have a common object, they 
correspond ivith each other, they look for assistance from foreign 
countries, in the very language of many of the seditious societies. 
Above all, it is to be marked, they have a common fund. Where is 



192 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



the security that the money of this fund will not, as the reverend 
Principal said, be used for very different purposes from the professed 
ones ? If any man says that the societies have not this connection and 
tendency, he says the thing that is not. It now, therefore, becomes us 
as much as possible to discourage numerous societies, for whatever 
purposes ; for, be the object what it may, they are all equally bad. 
And as for those missionary societies, I do aver, that since it is to be 
apprehended that their funds may be in time, nay, certainly will be, 
turned against the constitution, so it is the bounden duty of this House 
to give the overtures recommending them our most serious disappro- 
bation, and our immediate, most decisive opposition." 

Very extraordinary, surely, regarded as the production 
of a man still living ! It has so much of the true rust of 
antiquity about it, that to associate it with the present age 
by a link so unequivocal as the continued working-day 
world existence of the speaker, does violence in no small 
degree to the imagination. But it must have originated, 
as we have said, wholly in misconception and mistake, and 
should be regarded rather as an effect of the disreputable 
stratagem of Principal Hill, operating on a mind blinded 
by its fears and open to suspicion on only one side, than 
as the result of spontaneous conviction. We are pretty 
sure that the speaker, rendered wiser by the additional 
experience of forty-five years, would now be the very first 
to repudiate the sentiments which it expresses. He would 
deal by them as Knox and Luther dealt by the idolatrous 
tenets which in the days of their extreme youth they had 
deemed it their duty to hold. A remark, however, which 
seems naturally to grow out of the subject may not be 
deemed either irreverent or ill-timed ; and we shall intro- 
duce it by an anecdote. 

It is recorded of* the celebrated Lord Monboddo, that, 
when the great Douglas case was brought for judgment 
before the Court of Session, he descended from the bench, 
and, taking his place beside the clerk, there delivered his 
opinion. What could have moved him ? for he assigned 
no reason for the step. He simply rose from beside his 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



193 



brethren, and came down. Men of correct moral senti- 
ment had but to consult their feelings in order to dis- 
cover his lordship's motives. It was remembered that, 
previous to his elevation, he had been counsel in the case 
for one of the parties. It was known that, in common with 
all engaged in it, he had felt an intense interest in the 
issue, of which he could not divest himself, now that he 
was counsel no longer. And so it was at once inferred 
that, feeling himself rather a party than a judge, he had 
descended from the judge's seat, determined that, since he 
had now, in virtue of his office, to record judgment in the 
case, he should do so on the counsel's level, and, as it 
were, under protest of his own conscience. Believing his 
decision to be entirely just, he was yet sensible of an under- 
current of prejudice powerful enough to warp his better 
judgment. He took this mode of showing that he was 
sensible of it ; and though it might, doubtless, have been 
better for him to have declined giving an opinion in the 
case at all, it must be confessed that, since he did give it, 
it was well it should have been under circumstances so 
marked. 

Lord Monboddo carried his prejudices with him from 
the bar to the bench ; and he felt that he did. Are the 
majority of our Lords of Session in the present day men 
of stronger minds than Monboddo, or possessed of a more, 
complete control over their predilections and their antipa- 
thies? If the question cannot be answered otherwise than 
in the negative, is it possible to forget that in the present 
struggle not a few of our Lords of Session are as certainly 
parties in one character as they are judges in another? 
We do not refer to the controversy in its more obvious 
aspect — as a collision between two courts. In that aspect 
the Lords of Session may indeed be described as parties, 
and their decisions as decisions in favor of their own court. 
But we refer to it in a more 'emphatic sense — as a con- 
troversy between two great principles, Moderatism and 
Evangelism, and to the well-known fact, that the greater 

17 



194 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



part of the men who now, in the character of judges, 
record their decisions against the latter principle, have 
zealously contended against it as partisans in the charac- 
ter of ruling elders. They have passed hot from their 
debates in the General Assembly to their seats in the 
Court of Session, and their findings in one character agree 
entirely with their votes in another. We are far from 
impugning their motives in either capacity. We doubt not 
they have been thoroughly conscientious ; as much so 
when contending on unequal terms with Andrew Thom- 
son, and made to feel that he was not only an abler man, 
but also a better lawyer, than most of themselves, as when 
pronouncing judgment in the Auchterarder case; as much 
so when opposing themselves to the overtures on missions, 
as when granting interdicts against preaching the gospel 
and administering the sacraments at the instance of the 
clergymen of Strathbogie. We doubt not they have 
decided conscientiously. We doubt not that Monboddo 
decided conscientiously in the Douglas case; but Mon- 
boddo could himself fear, that, though he judged honestly, 
there were yet disturbing circumstances that might lead 
him to judge erroneously: and we are convinced the 
public- would think none the worse of the majority of the 
Lords of Session were they to manifest in some slight 
degree a corresponding fear. 

The remarks of Mr. Boyle called up Dr. Erskine, un- 
willing as he was, he said, again to encroach on the time 
of the Assembly. He could not understand why all asso- 
ciations of the people, however diverse the purposes for 
which they had been established, should be treated thus 
with equal severity ; or on what principle proper should 
be confounded with improper objects, from their merely 
possessing the common circumstance of being pursued, 
with a view to their accomplishment, by bodies, not indi- 
viduals. What was there* in the mere circumstance of 
union, of force enough to convert good into evil ? He 
had yet to learn that societies formed in the cause of 



THE DEBATE ON MISSION^. 



195 



humanity tended to render the minds of men turbulent 
and seditious ; or that the quiet of the state could be in 
any degree endangered by deliberations on the best pos- 
sible means of Christianizing the heathen, or by discussions 
regarding the more promising fields of missionary exertion. 
Good government had nothing to dread from religion ; 
irreligion, on the other hand, was the worst foe it had to 
combat. He proceeded to say, in language which we 
have already quoted, that he acknowledged, and gloried 
in acknowledging, himself a member of the Slave Abolition 
Society; that in no degree, however, on that account, was 
he the less attached to the constitution under which he 
lived. He believed he had given at least as many proofs 
of his regard for the peace of the land as the gentlemen 
opposite ; and he was prepared, he trusted, in his humble 
sphere, to make as many and as great sacrifices to preserve 
it inviolate. He had no wish, he said, to see the people 
becoming disputatious politicians; for he had seen their 
loose political speculations serving but to waste and dissi- 
pate their minds, and thus doing them harm without 
producing any counterbalance of good. ISTor was he at 
all partial to the late democratic societies ; some of them 
served only to show him how a few cunning men may 
lead multitudes astray. The pretended analogy, however, 
between these lately suppressed political associations and 
the lately established missionary societies was by much 
too far strained to be just. The one class had followed 
the other in the order of time ; but was there the slightest 
attempt to show that in this succession there was aught 
akin to the relation of cause and effect? Exactly the 
reverse was the case; and, to convince themselves thor- 
oughly that it was so, they had but to examine into the 
nature of the ingredients of which the associations and 
societies were respectively composed. He was very sure, 
for his own part, that he saw none of their violent political 
reformers stepping forward to take part in the missionary 
cause. He was equally sure that those who exerted them- 



196 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



selves in it most were men remarkable for their simplicity 
and purity of life, and from whom no good government 
could have any cause of alarm. Dr. Erskine sat down, 
and did not again mingle in the debate. The event deter- 
mined that he should take no peculiar interest in missions 
as a minister of the Church of Scotland ; but not the less 
on that account did he labor in their behalf as a minister 
of the Church of Christ; and his last work on earth, as 
we have already intimated, was the preparation of a 
pamphlet — one of a series — suited to draw the attention 
of the country to the good which they were the means of 
producing abroad. His remark with regard to the fact 
that he saw none of the more violent political reformers 
taking part in the missionary cause is a shrewd one. We 
have heard Chartist sermons in our time, and have 
described the divinity of the class as a sort of Moderatism 
possessed, — as composed of the commonplaces of a tame 
and inefficient morality, that never made any one more 
moral, shaken into uncouth activity by the eccentric ener- 
gies of the revolutionary spirit. One of their preachers 
we heard descant on missions. What particular view did 
he take of them ? or what is the opinion formed regarding 
them by the lay theologians of Chartism ? Exactly the 
Moderate view, as recorded in the debate of 1796. The 
preacher denounced them as singularly absurd ; nay, more, 
he deemed it little better than a crime to waste the 
resources of the country in benefiting foreigners, when 
there was so much to be done in our own country. 
"Charity, child, charity!" said Mrs. Tabitha Bramble, in 
entering her protest against the benevolent donation of 
her brother, honest Matthew, — " Charity begins at home ; 
these twenty pounds would have bought me a complete 

set of silks, head-dress, pinners, and ." — "Missions!" 

said the Chartist orator, — " missions ! — why, half the 
money expended on missions would win us the charter." 

The debate hastened to its conclusion. The Rev. 
Messrs. Johnstone, of Crossmichael, and Shepherd, of 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 197 

Muirkirk, together with a Mr. Dickson, ruling elder for 
the Presbytery of Biggar, spoke in favor of the overtures. 
Dr. William Taylor, of Glasgow, and the Rev. Robert 
Knox, of Larbert, were strenuous against them. Dr. Tay- 
lor urged the old argument : there was a great deal still 
to be done at home, — all the more, he said, in consequence 
of the much that had lately been undone by the writings 
of Paine. He urged, therefore, that they should deter- 
minedly oppose themselves to the Age of Reason and the 
overtures, and offer up prayers for the spread of the gos- 
pel. Knox, a gentleman who had been settled in his parish 
by the military, was content to denounce the indelicacy 
shown by members friendly to the missionary cause, in 
taking it somehow for granted that there was more of 
conscience in supporting than in opposing it. The As- 
sembly divided ; and, in a house of one hundred and two 
members, the overtures were dismissed by a majority of 
fourteen. 

The deposition of the Strathbogie clergymen was car- 
ried, in a house of three hundred and forty-seven, by a 
majority of ninety-seven. At least twice the number that 
voted in the Assembly of 1796, on both sides, attended 
the last extraordinary meeting of Commission, to record 
their resolutions on one side. The fact is no unimportant 
one. It shows that the languor and indifferency of the 
middle period of the Church's history is gone ; that not 
only the policy, but also the strength and energy, of her 
earlier time has been revived! Xor has the deepening 
interest been restricted to members of Assembly, or even 
to the Church's office-bearers. The heart of the people 
has been stirred. Dr. M'Crie asked, some eight or ten 
years ago, in reference to the widely-spread apathy which 
prevailed even then among the people regarding the coun- 
sels of the Church, "Where were the fervent supplications 
for the countenance and direction of Heaven in the delib- 
erations of the Assembly, which were wont to resound of 

old from the most distant glens and mountains of Scot- 

17* 



» 



198 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 

land?" We can now reply to the query in other terms 
than the Doctor did then. Many a prayer-meeting was 
held in the thousand parishes of Scotland on the night of 
the Great Meeting in Edinburgh, and there ascended 
many a fervent petition from the truly excellent of the 
country in behalf of their endangered Church. In one 
northern semi-Highland parish, that reclines to the south 
under the evening shadow of the huge Ben-wevis, three 
several meetings of the "men" of the district, — hoary- 
headed patriarchs, on the extreme edge of life, — attended 
by numbers of the young, the fruit of a recent revival, 
were held on that night, and the time of prayer was pro- 
longed from the fall of evening to the break of day. Our 
opponents may think very meanly of zeal of this character 
assuming thus the form of earnest prayer; but they must 
be profoundly ignorant if they think meanly of it as an 
element of strength and determination. 

The overtures on missions were negatived mainly on the 
argument — we employ the words of the Rev. Mr. Hamil- 
ton — that it was "improper and absurd to propagate the 
gospel abroad while there remained a single individual at 
home without the means of religious knowledge." Only 
two years after, in direct violation of the Barrier Act, an 
overture originating with the Moderate party, which inca- 
pacitated presbyteries from sanctioning the erection of 
chapels of ease, passed into a law. Moderatism could com- 
mand majorities in the Assembly, but not in all the pres- 
byteries of the Church ; and to the Assembly, therefore, 
by this act, was reserved the exclusive right of erecting 
chapels. What was the object of the measure? "To pre- 
vent,"' says a Church historian of the present day [Dr. 
Hetherington], " the erection of chapels of ease in any 
dangerous place where Evangelism was already strong," 
and to discourage the system of Church extension gener- 
ally. The party would not give the gospel to the heathen 
because there was much to do at home ; and they then 
discovered that they could not give it to the people at 



THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 



199 



home because it interfered with their policy. But the 
Moderatism of the present day has nothing in common, 
say men such as the Rev. Mr. Robertson, of Ellon, with 
the Moderatism of forty years ago. Men of such respect- 
able calibre might show just a little more sense by select- 
ing positions just a little more tenable. The point is 
capable of demonstration, in even an arithmetical form. 
The statistics of missionary exertion in connection with 
the schemes of the Church establish the disputed identity 
of the party, and the fixed character of its tenets. What 
principle is it that, when it dare no longer oppose itself to 
foreign missions, contents itself with doing nothing in 
their behalf? The same Moderatism which so powerfully 
exerted itself against missions in the past. What princi- 
ple was operative in the atrocity of Marnoch ? The same 
Moderatism whose forced settlements in the last century 
desolated our national Establishment, and robbed her of 
one-third of her people. What principle in the present 
day do we find loudest in denouncing the erection of our 
quoad sacra parishes ? That same Moderatism which set 
itself so insidiously at an earlier period to prevent the 
erection of chapels of ease. What principle demanded of 
the State, on a late occasion, in terms which could not be 
misunderstood, the ejection from the Church of all among 
its ministers who took part with the people ? The same 
Moderatism which so ruthlessly secured in the past the 
ejection of Gillespie and the Erskines. But we feel our- 
selves engaged in an idle task. The point in reality is 
not a disputed one. 



THE 



RIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN" PEOPLE. 



THE TWO PARTIES IN THE CHURCH OE SCOTLAND. 

The following formed the leading article in the first number of 
" The Witness," which was published on the 15th of January, 1840. 
The succeeding papers are compiled from subsequent numbers of 
that journal. — Ed. 

We enter upon our labors at a period emphatically mo- 
mentous, — at the commencement, it is probable, of one 
of those important eras, never forgotten by a country, 
which influence for ages the condition and character of the 
people, and from which the events of their future history 
take color and form. We enter, too, at a time when, with 
few exceptions, our Scottish contemporaries in the same 
field — unable, it would seem, to lead, and unwilling to 
follow — neither guide the opinions of the great bulk of 
their countrymen, nor echo their sentiments. Strange as 
it may seem, it is a certain fact, which in the nature of 
things must be every day becoming more and more obvi- 
ous, that on one of the most important questions ever 
agitated in Scotland the people and the newspaper press 
have taken opposite sides. 

A few simple remarks on the point at issue may show, 
more conclusively than any direct avowal, the part which 
we ourselves deem it our duty to take. There are parties 



THE TWO PARTIES IN THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 201 

which continue to bear their first names long after they 
have abandoned their original principles ; and the historian, 
in tracing their progress, has to regulate his definitions by 
his dates. There are parties, on the contrary, which remain 
unchanged for ages. The followers of Wesley are in every 
respect in the present day what they were when their 
extraordinary leader first organized their society. There is, 
on the other hand, a section of our Scotch Seceders who 
see nothing to fear from the counsels or the increase of 
Popery, and who can compliment the Gowdies and Simp- 
sons of the time on the policy which drove Fisher and 
the Erskines out of the Church. But the remark is exem- 
plified at least equally well by two antagonist bodies which 
for the last century and a half have composed the same 
corporation. The differences of the contending parties 
within the Church of Scotland arise solely from the cir- 
cumstance that the one retains its original principles, and 
the other has given them up ; nor is it at all improbable 
that it shall be decided by the issue of the present conflict 
whether the Church shall continue to unite its old char- 
acter to its old name, or whether for the future it shall 
retain the name only. 

, The evidence which establishes the thorough identity of 
the popular party with the original Church will be found 
to lie very much on the surface. The hereditary sympa- 
thies and dislikes of the Scotch people are strikingly cor- 
roborative of the facts furnished by history. Dr. Cook is 
well-nigh as decided on the point as Dr. M'Crie. The 
Churchmen of Glasgow who lately commemorated the 
triumph of Presbyterianism in the days of Henderson, are 
at one with the Dean of Faculty. The satires of Burns, 
and the David Deans of the novelist, add weight to the 
testimony of the first Seceders. Now, it is obvious that 
the unchanged must possess a mighty advantage over the 
transmuted party, — the advantage of a well-defined and 
long-sustained character. They have been thoroughly 
known to the people of Scotland for the last three centu- 



202 



THE TWO PARTIES 



ries. The Chalmerses and Gordons of the nineteenth 
century agree in their theology and their views of Church 
government with the Witherspoons and Dr. Erskines of 
the eighteenth; these again with the Hendersons and 
Ruthe.rfords of the seventeenth ; and these with the Knoxes 
and Melvilles of the sixteenth. But we find no such con- 
sistency in their opponents. Their sentiments have ever 
agreed with those of the age; nor have they differed more 
in many respects from the first fathers of our Church than 
from their immediate predecessors on the unpopular side. 
Dr. Bryce is not at one in his religious beliefs with Dr. 
M'Gill, of Ayr, however closely he may resemble him in 
his views of Church polity ; nor does Mr. Pirie approxi- 
mate, in more than his dread of such irregularities as the 
revival at Kilsyth, and his abhorrence of the popular voice, 
to the eulogist of Gibbon and Hume. The minority who 
oppose the veto in 1840 differ from the majority who first 
declared in 1784 that they no longer regarded patronage 
as a grievance ; for, while the one, in accordance with the 
skepticism of the age, would fain have abrogated the Con- 
fession of Faith itself, the other restrict their hostility to our 
books of discipline only ; nor, in passing upwards, can we 
entirely identify the antagonists of Gillespie and the Ers- 
kines with thd Churchmen who in a former age could so 
easily accommodate their conscience to the demands of 
Charles at the Restoration. Some few general features the 
party have all along retained. They have ever been favor- 
ably regarded by the men who derive their religion from 
the statute-book, and have ever secured to themselves the 
jealous dislike of our Christian people. Nor will it appear 
a mere coincidence, when we consider how naturally the 
same opinions and sentiments propagate themselves for 
ages in the same locality, that, with but one solitary excep- 
tion, the predecessors of the seven suspended ministers, 
who have so promptly accommodated themselves to the 
encroachments of the Court of Session, should have yielded 
an obedience equally prompt to the unhappy act which 



IN THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 



203 



overturned Presbyterianism in Scotland, and led to the 
longest and bloodiest persecution ever endured by the 
Scottish Church. It is, however, of the popular party 
alone that the experience of the country has been con- 
tinuous and uniform, and respecting which the testimony of 
any one age may serve for that of all the others. In seasons 
of tranquillity it has ever constituted that portion of the 
Reformed Church in Scotland which has given to the 
character of the people the stamp and impress of a pure 
Christianity; in the day of trouble and persecution it has 
constituted the whole of it. There is a marked difference 
between the fixed essential stamina of the human frame 
and those flying humors which add mightily to its bulk at 
one period, and enter into the composition of no part of 
it at another. 

Here, then, on a distinction as obvious as it is important, 
we take our stand. The cause of the unchanged party in 
the Church is that of the Church itself ; it is that of the 
people of Scotland, and the people know it; it was the 
cause of their fathers, and the fathers of the Reformation ; 
it is the cause of a pure, efficient, unmodified Christianity. 
And the cause opposed to it is exactly the reverse of all 
this. We appeal to the people, to history, to the New 
Testament. We appeal to even our opponents. We urge 
them to say whether, in the expressive language of Dr. 
M'Crie, the cry which now echoes throughout the country 
be not the identical " cry which has not ceased to be heard 
in Scotland for nearly three hundred years " ? We request 
of them sincerely to consider their present position, as 
illustrated and determined by the history of the Church. 
Among what party (in the pages of Calderwood and 
Wodrow, for instance) do they recognize their types and 
representatives, and in what place and attitude do they 
find the types and representatives of the body to which 
they are opposed? History is more than usually clear and 
definite on the point : it is one of those as to which the 
testimony of the present age regarding the past anticipates 



204 THE TWIN PRESBYTERIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 



that of the future regarding the j^resent. It would be no 
overbold matter to class the John Frosts of our own times 
with the Jack Cades of the time of Henry VI., or to 
compare the part taken by the Mayor of Newport in the 
late riots to that taken by the Mayor of London in the 
disturbance of Wat Tyler. There are general similarities 
of conduct and circumstances which occur to every one, 
and which constitute the simpler parallelisms of history. 
But there are also cases that are more than parallel, and 
circumstances that are more than similar. It was identi- 
cally the same, not a similar Christianity, which was de- 
nounced by the Sanhedrim, and which suffered in the ten 
jDersecutions. It was identically the same Protestantism 
for which John IIuss endured martyrdom on the continent, 
and George Wishart in our own country. It was identi- 
cally the same Presbyterianism for which Melville died in 
exile, and Guthrie on the scaffold. Is there no such well- 
marked identity of principle between the Churchmen on 
whom the fires of Middleton and Lauderdale fell heaviest, 
and the Churchmen exposed in the present conflict to the 
still more merciless exactions of the Court of Session ? 
And would not such of our bitter opponents as profess a 
high respect for the fathers of our Church do well to 
remember, that what has already occurred may possibly 
occur again, and that there once flourished a very respect- 
able party, who, when busied in persecuting the prophets 
of their own times, were engaged also in building tombs 
to the memory of the prophets slain by their fathers ? 



THE TWIN PEE SB YTEEIE S OE STRATHBOGIE. 

Some of our readers will be perhaps surprised to learn 
that there are now two presbyteries in Strathbogie, — the 
one recognized by the Church of Scotland as one of her 
duly constituted inferior courts; the other consisting of 



THE TWIN PKBSBYTERIES OE STRATHB GIE . 205 



seven suspended ministers, recognized by no Church what- 
ever. It was at one time supposed that secessions from 
the Scottish Church and the reign of Moderation would 
have come to an end together. But there is no mind 
sagacious enough to calculate on all the possibilities. The 
schism, too, seems to be spreading, and the members of 
this newly-erected presbytery are actively engaged in 
adding to their number one Mr. Edwards, an accomplished 
gentleman, who understands syntax, preaches a church 
empty, rivals Horsley in Biblical criticism, and is not less 
a Christian than any of the seven ministers themselves. 
Addison tells of a worthy author who wrote a large book 
to prove that generals without armies cannot achieve great 
victories. It is to be hoped that, for the good of learning, 
the argument still survives, and that it may possibly apply 
to clergymen, quoad civilia, when suspended by the Church 
and deserted by the people. 

The presbytery met at Keith on Wednesday last. All 
the members attended, — the seven suspended ministers 
and all, — and the meeting was constituted by prayer. The 
seven insisted that their names should be entered in the 
sederunt by the clerk, as members of court. Their proposal 
was, of course, negatived, on the obvious plea, that so long 
as the act of suspension remains in force, they can have no 
status in the presbytery, or any Church court whatever. 
Mr. Mearns, the clerk, however, a son of Dr. Mearns of 
Aberdeen, and a person of similar views with themselves, 
engrossed their names in defiance of the legitimately con- 
stituted members. He was, in consequence, suspended, 
and the Rev. Mr. Bell, one of the preachers appointed by 
the Commission, chosen in his place. But the suspended 
clerk, like the suspended clergymen, held himself none the 
less in office for the suspension, and refused to deliver up 
the records. A scene of confusion ensued. Mr. Bell, the 
newly-chosen clerk of the presbytery, commenced reading 
a minute of their proceedings ; Mr. Mearns, at the sugges- 
tion of Mr. Allardyce, began reading at the same time, 

18 



206 THE TWIN PRESBYTERIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 



and at the pitch of his voice, the minute of the previous 
meeting, rescinded by sentence of the Commission. The 
legitimate members carried, that whatever might be at- 
tempted by the pretended clerk should be held null and 
void. It was urged on the other side by Mr. Allardyce, 
one of the disqualified seven, that, in terms of the rescinded 
minute, the presbytery should proceed to take Mr. Ed- 
wards, the rejected of Marnoch, on his trials. The mod- 
erator, Mr. Dewar, of course refused either to recognize 
the mover as a member of court, or the minute as a docu- 
ment on which to found. It was modestly proposed by 
Mr. Allardyce, in turn, that Mr. Dewar should be forthwith 
removed for contumacy from the moderator's chair; and, 
five of the remaining six acquiescing in the proposal, it 
was pronounced that the moderator was removed, and that 
Mr. Cruickshank, of Glass, was appointed moderator in his 
place. Mr. Allardyce next suggested that, to avoid further 
interruption, the presbytery should retire into another 
room, and proceed to business. And accordingly the 
seven suspended ministers, with their disqualified' clerk, 
left the place of meeting for an adjoining apartment, to 
take the rejected presentee on his trials, in terms of the 
rescinded minute. The bona fide presbytery remained to 
transact the real business which had brought them to- 
gether. They were waited upon in the course of the 
meeting by a deputation from Huntly, with a largely signed 
petition from the inhabitants, respecting the building and 
constitution of a new church. The petition was read in 
the usual form, and ordered to be laid on the table until 
next meeting. 

Suspended, disqucdified, rejected, rescinded, — all these 
are English words, and bear very definite meanings. The 
Presbytery of the Seven — a phrase, by the by, that sounds 
very like the Council of the Ten — proceeded to business 
like their brethren; and they began, not by framing a 
confession of faith, or by drawing up a testimony, but 
by taking Mr. Edwards on his trials. They were not 



THE TWIN PRESBYTERIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 207 



compelled to do it, one of theni remarked ; they were 
not forced into it by hornings and captions ; and it had 
been said in high quarters that they might not be quite so 
precipitate. But the doctrine was a scandalous doctrine ; 
they would listen to no delay. It was their duty to take 
Mr. Edwards on his trials, and they were resolved to do 
their duty. Mr. Edwards accordingly proceeded to deliver 
the exercises prescribed to him. One of these was a dis- 
course on the text in Peter, " By which also he went and 
preached unto the spirits in prison." His views on the 
passage are not stated, and we have no means of knowing 
whether he remarked that there are discourses not unfre- 
quently preached by the spirits in prison themselves. 
The other exercise was a piece of Latinity, termed an 
exegesis. 

The meeting, at an early stage, was interrupted by the 
Rev. Mr. Robertson, of Gartly. He had been sent, he 
stated, as a deputation from the presbytery, in consequence 
of a report which had reached them that seven individuals, 
calling themselves the Presbytery of Strcithbogie, were pro- 
ceeding with the trials of Mr. Edwards, and he now wished 
to know whether the report was true. " We are the pres- 
bytery," said one, "and sent no such deputation." — "No 
reply should be given," exclaimed half a dozen others. 
" If we be interrupted in this way," remarked a member, 
bolder than the rest, " I shall move that the person inter- 
rupting us be taken into custody." Mr. Robertson left the 
room, and the seven proceeded to pass judgment on the 
exercises of Mr. Edwards. It is wonderful how genius 
may lie hid ; but it breaks forth at last. Mr. Cruickshank, 
of Glass, has discovered that this hitherto neglected man 
is elegant in his Latin and profound in his English, and 
that he beats Bishop Horsley all to sticks in Biblical criti- 
cism ; Mr. Cruickshank, of Mortlach, is equally decided ; 
Mr- Masson was astonished at the research displayed in 
the one discourse, and the first-rate character of the other; 
Mr. Thomson was struck with the rich scriptural illustra- 



208 THE TWIN PRESBYTEEIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 



tion ; Mr. Cowie saw the difficulty and the triumph, — the 
defeat of Horsley, and the manly integrity of the Latin ; 
Mr. Walker saw it too ; and Mr. Allardyce, though he had 
not caught the whole of the more classical discourse, — 
not, of course, from any deafness, like that of the monk, 
in his Latin ear, — was quite of the general opinion. " It 
is sweet," says the old poet, " to be praised by those whom 
all men agree in praising." The seven suspended minis- 
ters are rich in classical literature, and deeply read in 
Horsley. The Bishop, however, has written one sentence, 
not heretical, which perhaps Mr. Edwards has not yet sur- 
passed : it refers to religion, and we press it on their notice. 
"There is an incurable ignorance," says the divine, "which 
is ignorant even of its own want of knowledge." There 
is a sentence, too, in the classics which we think they would 
also do well to remember. " When the gods devote men 
to destruction, they first take away their senses." 

And it is thus that these weak and misguided men are 
setting themselves up in senseless but bitter and dangerous 
hostility to the best interests of the Church of Scotland, 
and acquiring for themselves a prominent, but surely no 
enviable, place in her history. It would be a vain matter 
to argue the point with them ; it is not argument they 
need. It would be equally idle, but for an opposite cause, 
to reason the matter with the Christian people of Scotland. 
But the case is a striking one : it shows how much, and in 
what degree, the spiritual character may be derived from 
a secular court ; and how much and in what degree secular 
acquirements qualify for a spiritual office. It is not enough 
that a few obscure country clergymen find no flaw in a 
man's literature ; it is not enough that they do not discover, 
or perhaps seek to discover, any very gross blemish in his 
reputation. There is an all-important change, regarding 
which our Saviour hath declared, with the solemnity of an 
oath, that the man on whom it hath not passed "shall in 
no way enter the kingdom of heaven ; " and without this 
great qualification no other can be of any avail. Much 



THE TWO STUDENTS. 



209 



has been written on the force of sympathy, — much, doubt- 
less, that is fanciful and idle. But there is a sympathy to 
which our Lord refers that is not fanciful, — the sympathy 
through which " the sheep know the voice of the good 
shepherd, and follow him." This sympathy the people of 
Marnoch have felt and can appreciate ; but they have not 
felt it with regard to the rejected presentee. 



THE TWO STUDENTS. 

Theee is a learned lawyer of the present day remarkable 
for his long speeches, — for an ability of writing with much 
ease what cannot be read without great difficulty, — and 
for the secularity of his views in ecclesiastical matters. 
This learned gentleman has written a book on the Church 
question, in which he discusses, among other points, the 
essential qualifications of a young licentiate. And so com- 
plete has he rendered the list, as to omit only a single 
point of fitness, — that one, however, the essential point 
emphatically described by our Saviour as " the one thing 
needful." He describes the difficulty with which the theo- 
logical student has often to contend, the long term of pri- 
vation, the immense labor, the many years of study, the 
great sacrifices in early life. He states that a parochial 
charge is the sole object for which all that he accomplishes 
is accomplished, or that he endures is endured. He states, 
too, that the remuneration is not proportionally great, — 
that the scanty income attached to parochial charges leaves, 
after all, only a life of struggle, care, and anxiety to the 
incumbent. He shows, besides, how inexpressibly hard it 
would be — how very unfeeling and very cruel — to suffer 
the effects of popular prejudice to disappoint the poor 
scholar of his scanty and inadequate meed, after his long 
years of endurance and exertion. 

About fourteen years ago we formed a very slight 
18* 



210 



THE TWO STUDENTS. 



acquaintance with a student of divinity, who came from 
a remote part of the country to teach a school in a village 
on the eastern coast of Scotland. He was a young man 
of very respectable ability, and very considerable acquire- 
ment. He was a person, too, of more than common 
determination, and in setting himself to school, and in 
passing through college, he had to contend with all the 
difficulties incident to a humble station and very limited 
means. He was naturally of a metaphysical turn, and had 
carried away, when attending the moral philosophy class 
at college, the second prize of the year. Little more can 
be added, however, on the favorable side. There was a 
substratum of strong animal propensity in the character ; 
some of the higher sentiments were miserably deficient; 
his metaphysical cast of mind had merely enabled him to 
master the subtleties of Hume, without enabling him to 
discover their unsoliclity ; and he had no practical acquaint- 
ance with religion. He had determined on being a clergy- 
man from motives of exactly the same kind which lead 
students in the other walks to make choice of physic or of 
law. Things are always judged of by comparison, and the 
meed which may seem scanty and inadequate to a wealthy 
lawyer in extensive practice is deemed an object worth 
struggling for by men who, as mechanics or laborers, would 
have had to work hard for not much more than one-tenth 
the same amount of remuneration. 

The student of divinity fared but hardly in the village. 
His school was tolerably well attended ; it was seen that 
he was a good linguist and a respectable mathematician, 
and that his pupils improved under him. By and by, how- 
ever, it was seen also that he was not at all the sort of per- 
son a student of theology ought to be. He was naturally 
cautious, and it was difficult to bring any direct charge 
home against him; and yet there was a general convic- 
tion in the village that he was not particularly sober, and 
not very strictly honest; and a report had gone abroad 
which, though it referred to something of a scandalous 



THE TWO STUDENTS. 



211 



nature regarding him, was yet deemed not at all scandalous 
in itself. It was bad, but then it was true. There were 
religions men in the village, — he had formed no close 
intimacies with them ; there were persons of an equivocal 
character in it, — they ranked among his most intimate 
acquaintance. He contracted debts which he seemed 
unwilling to pay. On one occasion he was summoned 
into court for the rent of a hall in which he taught his 
school ; and he rendered to the magistrate, in his defence, 
eighteen ingenious, semi-metaphysical reasons against pay- 
ing any rent at all. But the one simple argument of the 
pursuer — and it amounted to little more than the "Pay 
what thou owest" of the parable — proved an overmatch 
for the eighteen. In short, all who knew him had come to 
think highly of his ingenuity, and marvellously little of 
his principles, when his struggles in attending the classes 
both at college and the divinity hall came to a close, and 
he was taken on his trials by the presbytery of the district, 
to receive the finishing qualification through which im- 
moral men are transformed, by virtue of a license, into 
teachers of morality, and men of no religion into dissem- 
inators of religious truth. 

The clergyman of the parish in which the village is 
situated is a conscientious and devout man. A majority 
of his brethren in the presbytery are of the same charac- 
ter; and they determined, if possible, to keep the school- 
master out of the Church. They tried him on Latin and 
Greek, on theology and the mathematics ; but the school- 
master was quite as accomplished a scholar as most of 
themselves. They tried to substantiate against him charges 
of whose justice they were all morally convinced ; but the 
schoolmaster had been cautious, and they found them, one 
by one, vanish in their grasp. Difficulties were thrown in 
the way, and objections raised, but the perseverance of the 
probationer wore them down one after another ; and the 
presbytery were at length compelled to declare him a 
licentiate of the Church of Scotland. Still, however, 



212 



THE TWO STUDENTS. 



there was no change produced by the license, except that 
the schoolmaster now and then read a clever discourse in 
the pulpit of a Moderate minister. He lived as before; 
never paid his debts when he could avoid paying them ; 
got drunk occasionally with men who, as there is honor 
even among thieves, never betrayed him ; and set his trust 
for the future in the law of patronage and the kindness of 
a Highland cousin. The fatal veto act of 1833 passed the 
General Assembly, and the poor licentiate was ruined. 
Ministers, such as the suspended seven, might have recom- 
mended him; the patrons of Mr. Clark or of Mr. Edwards 
might have presented him; there was no presbytery in 
the Church which, under the old system, could have pos- 
sibly avoided ordaining him ; but the people disliked and 
suspected him, and the people would not have him. In 
short, the poor licentiate was a broken man. It is scarcely 
necessary to add, as it does not bear essentially on the 
end we propose, that, losing heart and hope, he soon after- 
wards fell into open immorality, and quitted the kingdom. 

At the time when we knew a little of the unlucky 
student, we were intimately acquainted with a student of 
a very opposite character. He had received an ordinary 
Scotch education, and had commenced business as a shop- 
keeper in the same village in which the other taught his 
school. He was a shrewd, vigorous-minded young man, 
invincibly honest, and, withal, diligent and careful ; and he 
began to save money. His mind, however, became the 
subject of a very remarkable change. He began to feel 
that what he had been accustomed to regard as the truly 
important business of life is really but of minor impor- 
tance after all, and that there is a " better part " to be first 
sought after, of incomparably greater interest and magni- 
tude. Those doctrines of the New Testament virtually 
rejected by a considerable party in the Church as mysteri- 
ous and peculiar continually filled his mind, — the fall and 
the restoration of man, the efficacy of prayer, the felt 
influences of the Spirit, the inexhaustible merits of the 



THE TWO STUDENTS. 



213 



atonement. His heart was powerfully impressed, and he 
became anxiously desirous that the hearts of others might 
be impressed also. He thought he could tell forcibly what 
he had felt so warmly ; and, after long and serious thought, 
and long and earnest prayer, — after he had taken the 
advice of all his better friends, and had carefully examined 
whether the guiding motive was really pure, and whether 
he was not confounding strong inclination for the necessary 
ability, — he shut up his shop, and entered the university 
as a student. 

Wilberforce was a very different sort of person from the 
Dean of Faculty. The refined and elevated spirit of the 
one could appreciate those influences of the unseen world 
which come breathing uj)on the heart, awakening all its 
aspirations after the spiritually good, strengthening its 
desires for the truly useful, enabling it to forget self and 
every petty concern, and to set before it, as the prime 
object, the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The 
other is a cautious calculator on the amount of the ecclesi- 
astical fee — the Joseph Hume of the Church's tempo- 
ralities. No man can better balance the half-charms of the 
stipend, and the half-comforts of the manse, against the 
years laboriously spent, and the privations patiently en- 
dured, in striving to secure them. The one deplores a 
licentiate ruined in his prospects through the rejection of 
the people, and sent to spend a life of obscurity in bitter- 
ness and misery. "I do not," says the other, in writing of 
Dr. Carey, "I do not know a finer instance of the moral 
sublime than that a poor cobbler working in his stall 
should conceive the idea of converting the Hindus to 
Christianity." 

But we must not lose sight 'of our friend the student. 
We wish some one would tell us how it is that the Mod- 
erates arrogate to themselves so much of the mind and 
accomplishment of the Church. It may be mere modesty 
asserting its right; but the present controversy at least 
does not promise to show that they are more than second 



214 



THE TWO STUDENTS. 



best in either intellect or learning. The conscientious 
student wrought hard. He gained no prizes the first year, 
for he had started from a point far in the rear of all his 
competitors; but he was soon abreast of the front rank, 
and in the mathematical class of the second year he was 
declared, after a hard contest, the first man. He gained 
several other prizes besides;; and, whatever might be 
thought of his religion, no one could well despise his 
learning. The little money he had saved as a shopkeeper 
failed him ere he had got half through his course. But, 
though as little presumptuous as any man, he believed in 
a superintending Providence, and that if he was really 
needed in the Church some unseen path would open for 
him as he went. And a path did open. He received 
unsolicited employment as a tutor in a respectable family, 
and soon after an appointment, equally unsought, to a 
parish school. He at length finished his preparatory 
course. He was naturally of a retiring disposition. He 
had no influential friends; he was acquainted with no 
patron ; he did not set himself to court popularity. There 
seemed to be no way of access for him into the Church. 
He was confident, however, that he would find something 
to do somewhere; something in Sierra Leone, or Tahiti, 
or New Holland, if not at home ; and so he did not feel 
very anxious. By and by, however, the people came to 
take an interest in him; they began to find out somehow 
that he was very much in earnest, and very much in duty; 
that he was on exceedingly good terms with a number of 
pious, old, poor people, who had only their Christianity to 
recommend them; that he was charitable to the utmost 
of his very limited means ; and that, when sickness or 
distress visited a poor family in his neighborhood, he was 
sure to visit it too. In short, the result was, that not only 
did the people begin to like him, but it was the best peo- 
ple who liked him best. A vacancy occurred in a remote 
Highland parish, under the patronage of the Crown ; off 
went a petition to Lord John Russell ; down came a 



THE PKESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 



215 



presentation from his lordship ; not one of the parishioners 
so much as dreamed of the veto ; and the friendless stu- 
dent is now a useful and respected minister of the Church 
of Scotland, and a zealous advocate of the popular right. 
He is, in short, one of what a smart contemporary calls 
the wild clergy. 

We have drawn two portraits, so faithful in every trait, 
so little indebted to fancy, that in at least one district of 
country there are hundreds, nay thousands, who will be 
able at the first glance to write a name under each. They 
represent the two opposite classes of our theological stu- 
dents, — we grant, not fairly ; — the one is a high specimen, 
the other falls somewhat below the average. But in the 
grand distinguishing principle, in the all-essential difference 
of motive, the representation is complete. The one class 
enter the Church earnestly solicitous for the high honor of 
being made fellow-workers with Christ; the other, that 
they may become gentlemen of from two to three hundred 
a year. The one class come frankly forward as the friends 
and advocates of the non-intrusion principle ; the other 
discover that it is a principle denounced by the law, 
subversive of the Establishment, and most unfavorably 
regarded by " many of the best and wisest ministers of the 
Church." 



THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 

"We paid our first visit to Daviot about twelve years ago, 
— late in the summer of 1828. It was on a communion 
Sabbath, and we went to attend sermon in the parish 
church. The parish is situated, as most of our readers are 
aware, in the Highlands of Inverness-shire, about six or 
seven miles to the south of Inverness. There rises a lofty 
rectilinear ridge directly over the town, composed of the 
old red sandstone of the district upheaved against the 
loftier primary regions ; a dark line of mountains appears 



216 



THE PRESENTATION TO DAYIOT. 



beyond; and in toiling up the long ascent, which passes 
from fertility and cultivation to a widely-sj:>read sterility, 
the stranger supposes that he is quitting the inhabited part 
of the country altogether for the upper wilds. About five 
miles from the town, however, he gains the top of the 
ridge, and finds that a wide moory valley, traversed by a 
river, and mottled here and there with a few groups of 
cottages and a few patches of com, intervenes between 
him and the hills. This long, wide valley comprises the 
greater part of the parish of Daviot, and the church, a 
handsome little edifice, occupies the northern bank of the 
river. We had no difficulty in finding our way. The scat- 
tered hamlets had poured forth their little groups of grave, 
church-going Highlanders ; and the long, wearisome ascent 
seemed dotted with passengers to the top. We found the 
churchyard filled to the gate with the Gaelic congregation, 
and the wooden tent which served as a pulpit rising in the 
midst. The entire scene was characteristic of the border 
districts of the Highlands. There was a large admixture 
of the Lowland garb, especially among the females ; but 
the plaids and the bright tartans carried it over the shop- 
furnished cloths and calicoes of the south; and an eye 
accustomed to the peculiarities of the Celtic form and 
countenance could scarce have mistaken the grave but 
keen-eyed descendants of the old clan Chattan, which, 
from time immemorial, had occupied this part of the 
country, for an assemblage of their Saxon neighbors of 
the plains. There was an air of deep seriousness spread 
over the whole. The clergyman who preached from the 
tent, himself a Highlander, was a devout, good man, of the 
popular school, and the attention of the Highlanders was 
riveted to the discourse. We may remark, in passing, that 
the Highland preacher who addresses Highlanders pos- 
sesses a mighty advantage, in his language, over the Low- 
land preacher who addresses a rural Lowland population 
in English. The English language is unquestionably a 
noble instrument in the hand of a master; but few preach- 



THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 



217 



ers, and certainly fewer congregations, acquire nearly the 
same mastery over it that even ordinary Highland preach- 
ers and congregations possess over the Gaelic. Almost 
every individual, in the one case, is acquainted with the 
whole vocabulary, — and a very expressive vocabulary it is, 
for at least narrative, description, and sentiment ; in the 
other case, the acquaintance is limited, among the great 
bulk of the people, to a narrow round of ordinary terms. 
If there be no fatal defect on the part of the preacher, a 
Highland congregation is invariably an attentive one ; and 
rarely have we seen Highlanders more seriously attentive 
anywhere than in the churchyard of Daviot on this com- 
munion Sabbath. 

The minister of the parish (the late Mr. M'Phail) 
preached inside the church to an English congregation 
of about two hundred. He was a devout and excellent 
man — a man of very considerable wit, too. Mr. M'Phail's 
discourse, like that of the Gaelic preacher outside, was a 
very impressive one, and the congregation were deeply 
attentive. We were struck, however, accustomed as we 
were to the state of matters in the north, with the small 
proportion which the communicants of the parish bore to 
its general population. The number of females at the com- 
munion table considerably exceeded that of the males, 
as is commonly the case where communicants are not 
numerous, but the whole taken together were dispropor- 
tionately few. And yet we could not avoid the conclu- 
sion, notwithstanding, — a conclusion which we have since 
had repeated opportunities of verifying, — that the people 
of Daviot are a serious and moral people, patient of reli- 
gious instruction, and warmly attached, like all the rest 
of their countrymen, to the doctrines of the Evangelical 
school. They can understand and value the religion fitted 
by Deity to the wants and wishes of the human heart. 

The parish is under the patronage of the Crown. When 
the good Mr. M'Phail was on his death-bed the people 
came to understand that interest had been made in high 

19 



218 



THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 



quarters to preengage Lord John Russell, if possible, in 
favor of a certain young gentleman, who would have 
deemed two hundred a year and a free house a very com- 
fortable settlement. It was not quite the time they could 
have chosen for themselves for urging anything of a coun- 
teractive tendency with his lordship ; but they had no 
choice, just as a Christian army, when attacked by an 
enemy on the Sabbath, can have none ; and so they united 
to petition Lord John that the appointment might be left 
open. His lordship cordially acquiesced : he went even 
further, and stated that any clergyman whom they agreed 
in recommending would be given to the parish. Mr. 
M'Phail died, and rather more than two-thirds of the adult 
male parishioners united in petitioning the Crown for the 
Rev. Mr. Cook, one of the clergymen of Inverness, — a 
gentleman, be it remarked, already settled as a minister in 
a town which, from its size and population, is known all 
over the country as the cajDital of the Highlands. The 
parish of Daviot is very extensive, — we believe, from 
eighteen to twenty miles in length ; and yet, in little more 
than twenty-four hours all the signatures were adhibited 
to the petition — surely, proof enough of itself that any 
charge of canvassing the parishioners, which might be 
preferred against Mr. Cook or his friends, could not pos- 
sibly be j ust. The people of a district twenty miles in 
extent, when exceedingly anxious to sign a petition, may 
contrive to do so in a very short time ; but to canvass 
such a parish, in order to render people willing who were 
not willing before, cannot be done quite so much in a 
hurry. It was one of the objections to Bayes, in the 
"Rehearsal," that, for the sake of probability, he should 
not have brought about his great changes so very suddenly. 
Now, on the allegation that the parishioners had been 
canvassed, — an allegation unsupported, of course, by any 
inquiry, for inquiry might have led to very inconvenient 
results, — the prayer of the petition was refused. We 
attach no blame to Lord John Russell. He has been 



THE PRESENTATION" TO DAVIOT. 



219 



somewhat imprudent in believing too rashly, and that is 
just all. 

A presentation to the parish was issued, through his 
lordship, in behalf of a young man favored by his friends, 
but whom rather more than two-thirds of the people have 
resolved not to receive or acknowledge as their minister. 
They could only reject him, however, through their repre- 
sentatives the- communicants, seven of whom also declared 
'against him — as nearly as may be the same proportion of 
this class as of the other. The poor people were very 
much in earnest. The day approached on which the seven 
were to exercise their privilege of the veto before the 
presbytery. Their fellow-parishioners were anxiously 
solicitous that they might be able to give an independent 
and resolutive "No" on the occasion, both in their own 
behalf and in theirs, without the fear of laird or factor 
before them, and urged them, therefore, to say whether 
any of them were in arrears with their rent, that they 
might instantly, by joint contribution, discharge them 
from the obligation. The evening preceding the meeting 
of presbytery arrived, and on that evening the seven com- 
municants were interdicted by. the Court of Session from 
exercising their right. It is unnecessary to comment on 
either the cruelty or the unprecedented nature of such a 
proceeding. We may instance, however, one of the dis- 
honorable sophisms which our opponents employ in this 
case, as a pretty fair specimen of the whole. Instead of 
opposing in their statements the majority of the seven 
communicants to the minority of the three, and the ma- 
jority of rather more than two-thirds of the parish to the 
minority of rather less than one-third of it, they oppose 
the majority of the one-third to the minority of the seven. 
The argument, it must be confessed, is worthy of the 
cause. We may state, too, a fact which illustrates the 
tone of feeling on the opposite side. The people of the 
parish of Daviot are far from wealthy. Highlanders on 
small sterile farms rarely save money; and there has 



220 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 

been very little laid by by the people of this moorland 
district. In the true Presbyterian spirit, however, they 
have declared their willingness to lay down their hardly- 
earned pounds by tens and twelves apiece, rather than 
submit to the intrusion of a minister who, in their con- 
science, they believe unsuited to edify them. Such is the 
spirit which our Dr. Bryces and our John Hopes would 
trample into the very dust ; but by Him who commended 
the poor widow and her humble offering it may be very 
differently regarded. 



THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 

In the preceding articles the Disruption controversy is illustrated 
in its immediate bearing on the rights of the Christian people 
invaded by patronage. In that which follows — the second point 
at issue — the possession of an independent spiritual jurisdiction by 
the Christian Church comes into view. The majority of the Strath- 
bogie presbytery had been suspended by their ecclesiastical supe- 
riors ; the minority had been empowered to exercise all presbyterial 
functions; and ministers had been appointed to conduct public 
worship in the parishes of the former. The majority applied to the 
Court of Session for an interdict to arrest all action of the eccle- 
siastical authority in the matter, and the decision of the Court was 
favorable to their claim. — Ed. 

In the belief that the Church in her present struggle can 
have no better friend than the simple truth, we presented 
the reader in a recent number with an outline of the 
Daviot case, and a slight, but, we trust, faithful, sketch of 
the character of the parishioners. The poor Highlanders 
of Daviot are not unworthy the protection of the Scottish 
Church, though the number among them in full com- 



THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 221 



munion with her are so disproportionately few. But why- 
are these not more numerous, since the general morals 
of the people seem so good? We crave the tolerance 
of the reader should we take what may seem a circuitous 
route in answering this question. 

Civilization did not travel through Scotland with rail- 
way speed three centuries ago. There are still very con- 
siderable differences between different districts of the 
country. The same fastnesses which kept out the Romans 
and the English of old, still keep out improvement and 
the arts ; and the Scotchman desirous to acquaint himself 
with the manners and usages which prevailed in the days 
of his great-grandfather, and curious to pass, as it were, 
from the present century to the middle of the century 
before the last, has but to transport himself to the western 
Highlands of Ross-shire, or to some of the remoter islands 
which lie beyond. About the period of the Union even 
the Lowland districts of the north of Scotland were fully a 
hundred years behind the Lowland districts of the south ; 
they were inhabited by a wilder and more turbulent race, 
and were, with the exception of a few insulated localities, 
Presbyterian only in name. The framework of the Scot- 
tish Church had been erected in them, but the spirit was 
wanting. 

Much, however, about the time rendered remarkable by 
the revival at Cambuslang and Kilsyth, a widely-extended 
district in the northern portion of the kingdom became the 
scene of a similar change. The popular mind suddenly 
awoke to the importance of religion ; the inhabitants of 
almost entire villages were converted; prayer-meetings 
were established ; clergymen became deeply fervent and 
instant in duty ; and the morals of a considerable portion 
of the people rose at once, from the comparatively abject 
state which obtains in half-civilized communities, to the 
high Christian level. It is a fact well known to persons 
acquainted with the history of parties in the Church for 
the last eighty years, that no inconsiderable portion of the 

IV* 



222 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 



Evangelical minority in our assemblies was drawn from 
this northern district; and that, at a period when Moder- 
ation was either extending its paralyzing influences over 
the people of the south, or wholly estranging them from 
the churches in which their fathers had worshipped, minis- 
ters of a Very different theology, and of a very opposite 
character, were scattering the good seed liberally in this 
highly-favored northern province, and that the blessing of 
God largely accompanied their labors. 

The effects of the change were all the more marked 
from the state of manners and morals prevalent at the 
time it took place. There is a mighty difference between 
civilization and barbarism ; and Christianity contrasts much 
more strongly with the one than with the other. There 
was indisputably an all-essential difference between an 
Ebenezer Erskine or a Thomas Bateman before and after 
their conversion, but by no means so cognizable a difference 
as 'between the New Zealand warriors described by the 
missionary Williams before and after the same important 
change had passed upon them. The Scottish divine and 
the English physician were both respectable members of 
society when practically unacquainted with the truth. 
But not even the miracle wrought by our Saviour on the 
wild man who lived solitary among the tombs was more 
marked in its effects than the conversion of the two New 
Zealand chiefs, as recorded by the missionary. Previous 
to the change which transformed them into gentle and 
singularly compassionate-hearted men, the fierce and re- 
morseless murderers and cannibals had never spared sex 
nor age, — had never fought with an enemy whom they 
had not subdued, — nor had they ever subdued a poor 
wretch whom they had not destroyed. Now, the change 
in our northern districts was one of strikiug contrast, on 
the same principle. It took place among a rude people. 
There were cases tried at the time by the hereditary barons 
on the court hills ; the town of Tain executed a Strath- 
charan freebooter on the borough gallows, several years 



THE COADIUXICAXTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 223 

after ; and cattle-lifting was common in all the districts, in 
at least the more immediate neighborhood of the High- 
lands. On one occasion the parish of Nigg — a parish in 
the eastern district of Eoss, and one of the centres of the 
revival — was swept, in a single night, of all its cattle by 
a band of caterans from the west. The clergyman, Mr. 
Balfour, a brave as well as a good and eminently useful 
man, immediately set himself at the head of his parishion- 
ers, pursued after the freebooters, overtook them in a wild 
Highland glen, fought them, beat them, and brought back 
the cattle. 

We have remarked that this northern district was a full 
century behind the Lowland districts of the south in gen- 
eral civilization. It is a rather striking fact, too, that the 
religion of the revival of this period resembled, in some 
of its accidental accompaniments, the religion of the south 
in the previous century. Christianity is ever the same, 
but it acts at different times on very different materials ; 
and, though the greater effects are invariably identical, its 
minor traits occasionally differ with the character of the 
people on whom it operates. There are anecdotes related 
of the Pedens, Camerons, and Cargills, of the days of 
Charles II., that one hesitates either to receive or to reject, 
in at least their full extent ; there are anecdotes of an 
almost identical character told of the later worthies of the 
northern districts. • Stories are still preserved of a Donald 
Roy, of Xigg, — one of the first elders of the parish after 
the reestablishment of Presbytery at the Revolution, — 
which, if inserted in the tracts of Peter Walker, or the 
older editions of the " Scots Worthies," would be found 
to amalgamate so entirely with the more characteristic 
anecdotes of these works, that the nicest judgment could 
not distinguish betwixt them. And Donald was only one 
of a class. 

There were prayer-meetings, as we have said, established 
very generally over the district at this period. There were 
also meetings of a somewhat different character, and which 



224 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY, 
i 



resembled much more the meetings of an earlier age in 
the history of the Scottish Church than the contemporary 
meetings of the same period in the south. In the twelfth 
chapter of the First Book of Discipline we find it laid 
down, that in every town where* there w T ere "schools and 
repaire of learned men, a certain day in every week should 
be appointed for the exercise of what St. Paul calls proph- 
esying." The chapter recommends that meetings be held 
for the edification of the Church, "by the interpreta- 
tion of Scripture," and that at these meetings not only 
should lay elders be invited to communicate their views 
of particular passages for the benefit of the whole, but 
also ordinary members of the Church, if qualified by grace 
and nature for the duty. Now, meetings of exactly this 
primitive character were established in the north at the 
time of the revival ; and in several districts of the country 
they still continue to be held. 

A text of Scripture is proposed as an exercise at the 
opening of the meeting ; and, in the manner prescribed in 
the First Book of Discipline, the individuals who take part 
in it rise in succession, either to propound their views of 
the passage, or to adduce from their own peculiar experi- 
ence facts illustrative of its truth. We have listened with 
wonder to the extempore addresses delivered at some of 
these meetings by untaught men, — ■ men from remote up- 
land districts, who had derived their 'sole knowledge of 
religion from meditation and the Bible. Their simple 
truthfulness and earnest fervor ; their exhibition of the 
workings of the human heart under the opposing influences 
of good and evil; their views of the effects of the reno- 
vating principle on the one hand, and the original deprav- 
ity, acted upon by temptation, on the other ; their enumer- 
ation of the various stages through which the pilgrim has 
to pass, and the changes effected in his views and opinions, 
— all these, in at least the choicer passages, have power- 
fully reminded us of Bunyan — the unapproachable Shaks- 
peare of Christian literature. The individuals who take 



THE COMMUNICANTS OP THE NORTH bOUNTRY. 225 

part in these meetings are emphatically termed " the men." 
Though generally elders of the Church, they are not inva- 
riably so. Death is fast wearing them out. We have seen 
in one parish church, in the north, the elders' pew filled 
with them from end to end, — all worthies of the right 
stamp, who would have joyfully betaken themselves to the 
hill-side in the present quarrel; but their honored heads 
are all low to-day. 

Now, there are three points to which we would recall 
the attention of the reader. The striking contrast between 
the manners and morals of the people in this district when 
Christianity was first introduced among them with power 
and effect, and the very opposite state of manners and 
morals induced by its influence, is the first of these. It is 
a curious fact, that the striking nature of this contrast, 
though all that remains of it be now merely traditional, 
has still a very marked influence on the people. It affects 
till this day the popular estimate of the religious character. 
But, unluckily, the good Protestant recollection of it is 
associated with a somewhat Popish feeling; and the high 
respect for the eminent Christians of a century ago is per- 
haps not sufficiently tempered by a recollection of the only 
ground on which, eminent as they were, they could have 
stood in the presence of Deity. Not merely is the pious 
ancestor raised high on a pedestal over the descendant, but 
that very pedestal proves also a stumbling-block to the 
descendant. We need only advert to the second point, as 
corresponding in character to the first. Nothing easier 
than to anticipate the effects on people so predisposed, of 
those sentiments of awe and veneration necessarily inspired 
by the belief that the more eminent Christians of the dis- 
trict had received, in their close walk with God, like the 
Pedens and Cargills of a former age, gifts and powers of 
an extraordinary character, through which they were at 
times enabled to triumph signally over the invisible ene- 
mies of another world, and at times to discern afar off the 



226 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 



form and color of events while yet enveloped in the uncer- 
tain obscurity of the future. 

The peculiar character and constitution of what we may 
term the meetings of the men is the third point to which 
we would direct the attention of the reader. With much, 
doubtless, that is excellent in them, they operate in the 
track of the traditional recollections adverted to. They 
raise, if we may so express ourselves, the standard of 
Christian qualification, by bringing before the great body 
of the people the peculiar experiences of singularly devo- 
ted and highly meditative natures as tests for trying men's 
spirits, and through which the believer is to judge whether 
he has in reality received of the Spirit of truth. Now, the 
great bulk of the population anywhere cannot form too 
lofty ideas of Christian morality or Christian privilege, nor 
is the estimate formed by the people of the north more than 
adequately high. But there is a mixture of error in it, 
inasmuch as it bears at least as direct reference to experi- 
ences of devout natures in an advanced stage of the Chris- 
tian pilgrimage, to gifts very rarely bestowed, and to at- 
tainments not often made, as to the infinite merits of the 
full atonement and the free grace of that adorable Being 
through whom the believer can alone be rendered worthy. 
The effects on gloomy and melancholy natures — the Lit- 
tle Faiths, the Feebles, and the Ready-to-Halts, of the 
Church — have been in some instances very sad. There 
have been men in these northern districts thoroughly awak- 
ened to a clear perception of the realities of the unseen 
world, and whose lives were " hid with Christ in God," who 
have yet walked in darkness all their days, anxious and 
doubtful, and who could never command the necessary 
confidence to approach the communion table. The great 
bulk of the people stand afar off, impressed with feelings 
like those which held back the Israelites of old from the 
Mount, — not, be it remarked, because they are indifferent, 
or deem lightly of the privilege, but because they esteem 
themselves not worthy. And hence it is that communi- 



THE COMMUNICANTS OP THE NORTH COUNTRY. 227 



cants in this northern district are so few. We are acquain- 
ted with men who would lay down their lives for the 
Scottish Church, and who have ranged themselves, in the 
present conflict, on the old Presbyterian side with all the 
earnest determination of her first fathers, who have not yet 
entered into full communion with her, and probably never 
will. 

Now, on the whole, this state of matters is much to be 
regretted. It is by no means so bad a state as prevails in 
some of the southern and midland parishes of Scotland, 
where the lax morality and imperfect theology of the 
Moderate school has thrown open the communion table to 
people of all characters — to persons who live loosely, and 
believe they know not what, among the rest. Still, how- 
ever, it is bad. It substitutes, to a certain degree, the 
standard of what we may term a traditional Christianity 
for the Christianity of the New Testament. It excludes 
serious and good men from sharing in a great privilege, 
of which they will never be able to render themselves 
deserving, but which has been purchased for them not- 
withstanding. It renders the cause of the Church less 
strong in her present position, in the districts in which it 
obtains, much as she is loved and venerated among their 
people. Finally, it lays her open, in cases like that of 
Daviot, to the plausible though unprincipled and unsolid 
objections of designing enemies, who can neither be made 
to feel nor understand the vast difference which exists 
between callous and dead consciences indifferent to the 
truth, and consciences scrupulously tender and anxiously 
awake, — between the practical infidel, who will not eat of 
the children's bread just because he has no appetite for it, 
and the timid Christian, who, while he longs after it, is yet 
restrained by a sense of his own unworthiness, and lives 
on in unhappiness without partaking of it. 



228 SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENCE THE DISTINCTIVE 



SPIKITUAL INDEPENDENCE THE DISTINCTIVE PKIVI- 
LEGE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 

We speak with all due respect when we say that, had 
our ancestors been content that our Church should have 
been based on the same foundation with the sister Estab- 
lishment, they might have saved themselves many a 
harassing struggle, and many a severe and long-protracted 
pang. Three succeeding generations of our countrymen 
might have lived and died in peace. There would have 
been no imperative call to the battle-field ; no need to 
brave the dungeon and the scaffold ; no necessity, when 
broken and discomfited in the contest, to retire, as unsub- 
dued in spirit as at first, into the wilder recesses of the 
country, and, in the midst of privation, suffering, and death, 
to cherish the indomitable resolution of maintaining in 
unbroken integrity the spiritual independence of the 
Church. We respect the English Establishment, with 
its long list of great and good men; but we are not to 
place on the same level the dearly-purchased privileges of 
our own. 

It is surely well, since the struggle threatens to be a 
protracted one, to be preparing ourselves for it — "to be 
marking our bulwarks, and looking well to our walls." 
There are strong grounds of hope, and great cause for 
thankfulness. It is in no new quarrel that the Church and 
the people of Scotland are now engaged; the testimony 
of the past bears direct upon the present and the future ; 
and we not only know that it is a righteous quarrel, from 
the principles which it involves, and because it was so 
especially the cause of the righteous in former times, but 
because the same unchangeable One who so especially 
favored it of old is in the same gracious manner especially 
favoring it now. We have evidence in our favor of the 
highest kind, and grounds of comfort on which it is even a 



PRIVILEGE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 229 

duty to build. Nor are the minor considerations to be 
overlooked. We haYe read the history of Scotland to 
very little purpose if we are mistaken in deeming firmness 
one of the main characteristics of the people. It is the 
history of a determined handful, maintaining their place 
and name among the nations more on the strength of this 
quality than on even that of their valor itself. It was 
their firmness which gave effect to their valor, and enabled 
them to reap the fruits of it. It was this quality which of 
old, when English enterprise was so successful in Ireland 
and France, imparted so different and so disastrous a char- 
acter and issue to English enterprise in Scotland. We see 
it paramount in the protracted struggle of our ancestors in 
the thirteenth century ; we catch a glimpse of it at even 
an earlier period, when the Dane and the Vikingr ravished 
our coasts ; we read it legibly inscribed in the remains of 
the first and second wall with which the Roman belied 
his proud vaunt of conquest ; we see it standing out in 
high relief, and encircled with a halo of moral glory, in 
the troublous times of Knox and Wishart ; we see it fixed 
in one unaltered attitude during the whole of the succeed- 
ing century, unmoved from its place by the utmost rigor 
of fierce and remorseless persecution ; we see it, though 
miserably misdirected and mistaken, in the one striking 
historical incident of the century that followed, — in the 
enterprise of the handful of half-disciplined men who 
fought their way into the centre of the sister kingdom, 
and bore down before them the best troops of England 
again and again. Nor has the character changed in the 
least ; nor is it forgotten to what country the soldiers 
belonged who, in one of the earlier battles of the last war, 
scattered in the charge the invincibles of Napoleon, and 
against whom, in its latest and bloodiest fight, the pride 
and strength of France was thrice disastrously broken, and 
which preserved entire to the last its own iron walk There 
is surely ground of hope that in this quarrel, so emphati- 
cally Scotch, so peculiarly popular, so hallowed by all the 

20 



230 THE " GRASPING AMBITION " 



old associations, so honored in the testimonies of departed 
worthies, so thoroughly identified with spiritual religion, 
so eminently favored with the countenance of Deity, — . 
surely there is ground of hope that in this quarrel the 
grand national characteristic will not fail. Our Church 
has already spoken, and spoken by her greatest man ; and 
not only did we feel the sense of sacredness and the high 
obligation of duty which the pledge involved, but we felt 
also, when the irrepressible plaudits arose around Chal- 
mers, that it was a Scotchman who had spoken, and that 
it was Scotchmen who approved. We repeat his emphatic 
words : " Be it known, then, to all men, that we will not 
retrace a single footstep. We will make no concession 
to the Court of Session ; and that not because of the dis- 
grace, but because of the gross and grievous dereliction of 
principle which we would thereby incur. They may by 
force eject us out of our place, but they never will force us 
to surrender our principles : and if the honorable Court 
should again so far mistake its functions as to repeat or 
renew its inroads, I trust they will again meet the recep- 
tion they have already gotten, — 4 To whom we gave place 
by subjection, no, not for an hour, no, not by a hair- 
breadth."' It was more than Chalmers who spoke in these 
sentences; they are instinct with the genius of the Scot- 
tish Church, — they embody the main characteristic of the 
Scottish people. 



THE " GRASPING AMBITION" OF THE NON-INTRU- 
SIONISTS. 

We have just seen in a Liberal London newspaper — 
favorable to the cause of dissent in the degree in which 
dissent is political, and wholly indifferent to it in the de- 
gree in which it is religious-— a smart paragraph on the 
Church question. It reiterates the charge of clerical ambi- 



OF THE NON-INTRUSIONISTS. 



231 



tion and usurpation first preferred against the ministers of 
our Church, in the present struggle, by the Dean of Fac- 
ulty, and then idly bandied among his party, until caught 
up by the Voluntaries in the manner in which drowning 
men clutch at straws. But miserably unsuited does it seem 
to serve their purpose. Our London contemporary "has 
repeatedly stated," he says, "that the great object of the 
clerical non-intrusionists is to grasp the whole patronage 
of the Church of Scotland." He adds further, that "the 
usurpers will ultimately be defeated ; " and then concludes, 
hardly two sentences after, by asserting that the balance 
in favor of the non-intrusionists (the ambitious and usurp- 
ing clergymen, be it remembered) was secured " by the 
burgh elders elected to the General Assembly under the 
Jfunicijxd Reform Bill. Well has it been remarked that 
error is ever inconsistent. It is not in the nature of things 
that good argument should favor a bad cause, or that what 
is true should militate against which is right. 

It is no very difficult matter to say how a man such as 
the Dean of Faculty should be led, through a confusion of 
ideas natural to his party on religious subjects, half to 
believe his own charge. He, of course, sees that the great 
principle for which the Church is contending cannot exist 
without mightily strengthening one of our two ecclesiasti- 
cal parties, and ultimately wearing out the other. He sees 
that if the majority carry their measure, they must become 
an immensely more preponderating majority. He sees, fur- 
ther, that they must of course possess some measure of 
power as such ; not quite the sort of power possessed by 
his friends of old, but still a species of power ; and seeing 
this, and reasoning in part from his own feelings, and in 
part from a pretty close acquaintance with the governing 
mot.ives of his party, he concludes that this modicum of 
power is the main object of the struggle, and, in accord- 
ance perhaps with the professional license, describes it as 
the only object. All this is easily understood. It is 
equally obvious that in every struggle which terminates 



232 



THE " GRASPING- AMBITION " 



decisively, the conquering party becomes the more power- 
ful one. When Christianity rose over paganism, Christians 
became in consequence more powerful; when Protestant- 
ism rose over Popery, Protestants became in consequence 
more powerful ; when Presbyterianism rose over -Prelacy, 
Presbyterians became in consequence more powerful; and 
there were no doubt respectable, gross-minded pagan, and 
popish, and prelatic gentlemen in those days, who, like the 
Dean of Faculty in our own times, would have looked to 
the inevitable power as the actual prize secured by those 
struggles, and as therefore the main .object of the conquer- 
ing parties. All this, we repeat, is easily understood ; and 
it may be understood at least equally easily from the 
instances adduced, that a mere consequence arising out of 
any measure may be an essentially different thing froni the 
great end proposed by that measure. It was no thirst of 
power that Christianized the world ; it was no thirst of 
power that reformed the Church. 

It is well to consider further the mode in which the 
non-intrusion principle can alone add to the power of the 
rising party, by adding, of course, to their number. It can 
add to their power only through the medium of the people. 
They are popular ; the people love them, and they detest 
their opponents. The non-intrusion principle, if fairly 
established, would be simply a power conferred on the 
people of rejecting the men whom they hate. The power 
of the popular party in the Church would be a mere conse- 
quence, therefore, of the exertion of this power on the part 
of the people. If the party ceased to be popular, they 
would inevitably cease to be powerful, just in the way that 
their unpopular opponents are ceasing to be powerful. 
And this, then, is the kind of usurpation and grasping 
ambition with which they are charged ! They love the 
people, and the people love them. They are striving to 
protect the peoj^le from the objects of their hate, by 
extending to them an ability of protecting themselves ; 
and they are therefore called ambitious, and usurpers. 



OF THE NON-INTEUSIONISTS. 



233 



The Tyrant of the Cheronese 

Was freedom's best and dearest friend. 

But what is the particular kind of power which their 
popularly acquired majorities is to secure to them? Power 
to get churches for their sons and nephews ? No ! The 
people have been vetoing the sons and nephews of very 
worthy men, because, though they liked the worthy men 
themselves, they did not like their sons and nephews. 
What sort of power, then ? Power of a far nobler and 
widely different character, — power to put down the men 
who used to force their sons and nephews into churches 
against the will and the interests of the people, — power to 
overrule the counsels of the hirelings who partook of the 
people's patrimony, but who wrought not for the people's 
good, — power to labor more and more effectually for the 
benefit of the people, — power, through their hold of the 
affections of the people, to spread anew the blessings of 
Christianity among the masses broken loose from its sacred 
and humanizing influences, — power to stem, for the good 
of the people, the demoralizing flood of infidelity which 
is threatening to bear them down, as it has borne down 
the millions of other countries, — power adequately to ex- 
tend to the people, as of old, the blessings of religion and 
the light of learning. * 

The popularity of the party now happily dominant in 
the Church constitutes more than their strength; it is 
founded on a principle which renders it also their most 
powerful recommendation. It was not by flattering the 
people that men such as Knox and Melville became the 
trusted and beloved leaders of the people. They led them 
on the same high principle through which the discourses 
of our Saviour were so eminently popular, and through 
which crowds were attracted by the preaching of the 
apostles, wherever they went. God, in his wisdom and 
goodness, has fitted the glad tidings of salvation which 
he reveals to the human nature which he has made. The 

20* 



234 • THE " GRASPING AMBITION," ETC. 

common people listen gladly to the gospel now, as of old, 
even when they close not with its offers ; and the men who 
preach it in sincerity and truth partake of its popularity ; 
and hence their influence with the congregations whom 
they address. Nor has this body of men — the Evangel- 
ical ministers of our country, the true representatives and 
descendants of our elder worthies — ever deceived the 
people of Scotland. What was the object of their long- 
protracted struggles in the past? Solely and exclusively 
the glory of God and the good of the people. The history 
of Rome furnishes us with one example of a poor patriotic 
man quitting his plough to lead the armies of his country, 
and, after he had fought her battles and defeated her ene- 
mies, returning a poor man to his plough again. The 
history of the Scottish Church abounds in such examples ; 
the biographies of all her better ministers repeat the story 
of Fabricius. Who has not heard of the Herculean labors 
of Knox, and Melville, and Calderwood, and Bruce, and 
Henderson, and Guthrie, and those of their noble-minded 
coadjutors and associates, the other saints and martyrs of 
our Church? Where are the patrimonies which they 
bequeathed to their children, or what the amount of the 
riches which they hoarded? What was Knox's share of 
the forfeited Church lands ? Just Fabricius's share of the 
spoils. Manfully did he struggle for these with/a grasping 
and selfish aristocracy, but it was exclusively on the peo- 
ple's behalf. However great the opportunities of accumu- 
lation possessed by these men, they all died poor, many of 
them in utter destitution; but their , wealth abideth not- 
withstanding, and an assembled world will hear of it at the 
last day. We have but to look, too, at the constitution 
which they framed for our Church to be convinced that 
they nourished in their poverty and self-denial no priestly 
feeling of exclusiveness ; that their struggles were no 
Jesuitical struggles for the advancement of their order; 
that all which they did and suffered was truly and une- 
quivocally for the cause of God and the people. With a 



POPULAR ESTIMATE OF THE TWO PARTIES. 235 



liberality unmatched, save in the times of the apostles, 
they provided that the layman and his minister should sit 
together in their ecclesiastical courts armed with exactly 
the same authority, and gave to the people at large the 
power of choosing both. The Presbyterians of Scotland 
knowing this, and knowing, too, that the kindred spirits 
who represent these worthies in the present day are influ- 
enced by no lower motives than those by which they were 
animated, and that they pursue objects not merely similar, 
but identical, are not to be deceived by the palpably unjust 
charges of either hireling pleaders or prostitute scribes, 
who, mean-spirited and selfish themselves, have no heart 
to appreciate virtues removed not only beyond their prac- 
tice, but even beyond their conception. That body are 
surely worthy of all trust who were never yet found to 
deceive. 



POPULAR ESTIMATE OE THE TWO PARTIES. 

"Rejection without reasons." How is it that the two 
great parties in the Church have come to differ so entirely 
on a point like this? — that the one party are so much dis- 
posed to trust to the people, and the other so determined 
to place no confidence in them, unless they cannot possibly 
help it? The question is a very simple one, but the reply 
involves some rather important principles. 

It is a striking fact, but not the less a certain one, that 
the men most generally beloved and respected by the 
Presbyterians of Scotland, and the men most thoroughly 
disliked and despised by them, have been members of the 
same profession, and have belonged to the same body. 
The political field north of the Tweed has hitherto been 
singularly barren in patriotism. We have a few names 
which belong to our earlier struggles with England that 
are worth remembering, and that we are not at all likely 
soon to forget; but the Scottish politicians of the after 



236 



POPULAR ESTIMATE 



ages are of a very questionable character indeed. Contrast 
our history in this respect with that of England. Where 
are our Hampdens, our Seldens, our Russells, our Algernon 
Sidneys, — where even our gallant and generous spirits, 
noble and disinterested on a basis of romance, — our Sir 
Philip Sidneys and Sir Walter Raleighs ? Scotland reck- 
ons no such names among those of her statesmen of the 
last three centuries. The soil has been unfavorable to 
patriotism ; the people, in consequence, down to a recent 
date, had no political existence. We have had great 
abundance of crafty politicians, — Mortons, and Maitlands, 
and Middletons, — men bent on the aggrandizement of 
themselves and their families, and as faithful to their mas- 
ters as their natures allowed ; but we have had no patriots, 
if, indeed, we do not except Fletcher, of Salton ; and so 
much was he a republican of the old school, that he would 
only have set free one-half the people, and made the other 
half slaves. Certain it is, however, that Scotland has her 
revered and honored names notwithstanding, — names in 
no respect inferior to those of England, and now, after the 
lapse of centuries, much better known to the people. For 
every Englishman who knows anything of Hampden, we 
will find at least twenty Scotchmen who love and venerate 
the memory of Knox. All the true patriots of our country 
— the men who stood out disinterestedly in the cause of 
the people, and elevated them by their labors in the moral 
and intellectual scale — have been either ministers of the 
Church, or persons who had caught from them the truly 
liberal spirit which genuine Christianity never fails to 
infuse. Who was it that first addressed his "beloved 
brethren " the " commonality," at a time when they were 
sunk in the slavery of vassalage, and told them of a high 
spiritual level on which, as immortal creatures for whom 
Christ had died, they were no whit inferior to their mas- 
ters? Who was it that assured them that, "albeit God 
had ordained distinction and difference in the administra- 
tion of civil policies betwixt kings and subjects, rulers and 



OF THE TWO PARTIES. 237 

common £>eople, yet in the hope of the life to come he had 
made all equal " ? Who but the greatest and the noblest 
of our patriots, — the man whose large-minded educational 
schemes are still half a century ahead of our age, — who 
shared his principles and maxims of political liberty with 
his friend, the elegant and masculine-minded Buchanan, — 
"principles and maxims," says Sir James Mackintosh, "de- 
livered with a precision and enforced with an energy which 
no former age has equalled, and no succeeding age has 
surpassed," and the liberality of whose ecclesiastical polity 
our better Churchmen are even now striving at a distance 
to approach ? There is little wonder that the people of 
Scotland should continue to cherish and venerate the 
memory of Knox. 

Our great reformer is the true type and representative 
of the popular party, — the Christian patriots of Scotland. 
It is no difficult or uninteresting matter to trace the line 
through our country's history, from the days of Mary 
downwards. There is, in truth, not much else on which 
the eye can rest with pleasure. Unquestionably the author 
of the " Scots Worthies" gave his book the right name. 
The men whose biographies he relates were emphatically 
the worthies of Scotland ; and the popularity of the work 
shows how decidedly the great bulk of the population have 
acquiesced in the propriety of the title. 'Nov is the pop- 
ularity of the party less shown by the history of our Church 
in the last century than by that of the century which went 
before. Who but the Erskines and their followers could 
have led away from the Established Church five hundred 
congregations of Scottish Presbyterians warmly attached 
to the Church of their fathers? We have been much 
impressed by the abiding character of the memory and 
influence of ministers of the true stamp in our country 
districts. There are individuals of no other class so long 
remembered by the people of Scotland ; striking passages 
from their oral discourses, only once delivered, sometimes 
survive the men themselves for two whole generations. 



238 



POPULAR ESTIMATE 



Even in our larger towns, where the population are more 
in a state of flux, half a century hardly succeeds in effacing 
the cherished recollection of an eminent minister. Dr. 
Balfour, of Glasgow, is better remembered in that city 
than any other man connected with the place who died so 
many years ago ; and we question whether the recollection 
of Dr. Andrew Thomson is not more deeply impressed on 
the mind of the Edinburgh people, members of the Church, 
than that of any other citizen whose career of eminence and 
usefulness terminated within the present century. There 
does not exist a tenderer or more enduring tie among all 
the various relationships which knit together the human 
family, than that which binds the gospel minister to his 
people. 

It is not less certain, however, that there is a very con- 
siderable portion of our Scottish clergy less popular, and 
regarded more generally with jealous dislike, than any 
other class in the country; nor is it any hatred of the 
order through which they suffer, for it is identically the 
same portion of the people who most venerate their breth- 
ren that most dislike them. In nine cases out of ten the 
minister of a country parish is either the man most loved 
and respected in it, or the man least cared for, and against 
whom the strongest prejudice is entertained. Half the 
witticisms of the country have been made at the expense 
of the cloth; and it will invariably be found that the more 
secular-minded the clergy of a district become, the more 
readily will these be picked up and repeated. The mere 
fact of their existence shows nothing. Shimei cursed 
David; the dragoons of the times of Charles II. were 
merry at the expense of the men whom they persecuted 
and murdered. Moderatism in Strathbogie has been pro- 
fane in bad rhyme in attempting to be smart on some of 
the most revered ministers of our Church; and an Edin- 
burgh artist, who has humor enough to make capital cari- 
catures, and wisdom enough not to publish his creed, has 
been following in the same track. But in all these, and in 



OF THE TWO PARTIES. 



239 



similar instances, the joke meets with no response in the 
public mind. Very different is the case, however, when it 
affects a degraded and earthly-minded clergy. There is a 
disposition to receive and repeat. Dr. Johnson, with all 
his high respect for the English Church, could yet solemnly 
assure Boswell, in one of his serious moods, that he had 
scarce ever met with a pious clergyman. The time (that 
of the reign of Moderatism in our own country) was un- 
questionably a time of spiritual death in the sister Estab- 
lishment. And it is well to remember that this was also 
the time when clergymen were the subjects of ridicule 
among every class of the English people, high and low, 
and the butts of almost every company. It was the atro- 
cities of the French Revolution that first secured some 
little degree of respect for the cloth in the upper walks of 
society, by showing that even the husk of religion, the 
mere empty shell, could not be safely slighted. Christian 
clergymen cannot occupy with comfort a middle place ; 
they cannot rest in the mere mediocrity of their station as 
gentlemen of from three to four hundred a year ; and we 
accept it as one of the many proofs of the excellence of 
religion that such is the case. Even the men who do not 
profess to believe in Christianity at all, tacitly confess how 
highly they estimate its value, by the severity of their 
animadversions on unfaithful clergymen, and the high 
standard of morality and extensive usefulness by which 
they try them. No one ever expects morals of a high 
tone, or usefulness of a signal character, from the priests 
of a false religion. Their duties are comprised in a mis- 
erable round of absurd rites and ceremonies ; and if they 
do no positive mischief, — if they be content with simply 
doing nothing, — we think they do well. But members 
of a Christian ministry are tried by another standard. 

Hence one great cause of the unpopularity of the body 
now the minority in the Church. But there are other 
causes besides. The Moderate school is singularly unfa- 
vorable to the production of popular talent in the ministry. 



240 POPULAR ESTIMATE OF THE TWO PARTIES. 



It has unquestionably produced some very able men. 
Robertson was only inferior to his friend and contempo- 
rary Hume ; and the sermons of Blair, though occasionally 
heavy, are nearly as finished pieces of composition as the 
Loungers and Mirrors of M'Kenzie. But though such 
men, when they exerted themselves, could no doubt be 
listened to from the pulpit with a good deal of intellectual 
gratification, the preachers of this school, regarded as a 
body, have been miserably tame and inefficient. In truth, 
Scotland does not produce talent enough, even were the 
whole of it engaged in the Church, to fill her thousand 
pulpits with Moderate ministers of but middling interest 
as preachers ; and ordinary men are totally unsuited to 
make an impression. What is there within the reach of 
such ? The commonplaces of morality dressed up in the 
merest commonplaces of language, — the gum-flowers of 
false* rhetoric all fashioned after one tame pattern, — the 
offensive pnlings of a sickly sentimentality; really there is 
little to wonder at in finding the churches where such 
ministers preach deserted by more than half their people, 
■and the rest fallen fast asleep. Are our readers acquainted, 
however, with the case of men of even this stamp awak- 
ened in the middle of their indifference to a pervading 
sense of the importance of 'the one thing needful? — of 
men of ordinary powers who preached inefficiently for 
years, and then became converts to the truth ? We are 
acquainted with cases of this kind. We are convinced, too, 
that there are few districts in Scotland in which our read- 
ers have not either known or heard of such, and have not 
been struck, like ourselves, by the degree of popular talent 
which the change seemed at once to communicate. Xo 
doubt a great deal must have depended, as it always does 
in such cases, on the new tone of earnestness imparted to 
the preacher. Men who wish to affect others must first be 
affected themselves. Much must have depended, too, on 
the whole mind being brought into play, — not the intel- 
lectual part merely, but the affections and the sentiments 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 



241 



also. The grand difference, however, must have consisted 
in the newly-acquired anxiety to communicate the revealed 
truths of God, instead of the mere cogitations of the 
speaker. The change substituted the scheme of salvation, 
in all its infinite wisdom, for the jejune reflections and 
tame, inefficient moralizings of an ordinary man. Boston 
and Willison were by no means superior men to Blair and 
Logan, and certainly far inferior writers : why are they in 
such high repute among the people of Scotland, and the 
others left to the admiration of Moderate ministers and 
their supporters ? Simply from their being what the more 
fashionable divines were not — faithful interpreters of the 
mind of God. 

Hence one of the most gratifying circumstances con- 
nected with the popularity of the dominant party. It is 
not a popularity unworthily acquired. It does not even 
result from the gratitude of the people for important ser- 
vices rendered to them in the past, though this, no doubt, 
has its influence. It arises chiefly from the nice adapta- 
tion which exists between the popular mind and the truths 
of revelation, and the natural attachment which obtains 
between the faithful preacher and his flock. And hence, 
too, the importance of what we may term the shibboleth 
of the party, "rejection without reasons," and the dreaded 
abhorrence with which the Moderate section regard it. 
They have translated the phrase aright in its bearing on 
themselves, and find that it embodies exactly the same 
meaning with the handwriting on the wall. 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 

The Earl of Aberdeen brought forward, on Tuesday 
last, his long-expected bill on the Church question. Cow- 
per tells us of men who " do nothing with a deal of skill." 
His lordship has been doing nearly as much without the 

21 



242 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 



skill. He proposes to reenact an already existing law, 
which has certainly not been suffered to fall into desue- 
tude, and to do for the Church what he confesses the 
Church, in even her present circumstances, can do for 
herself. In one important respect, however, the proposed 
measure is better than if it had not been so bad. It will, 
no doubt, satisfy Dr. Cook and his friends, for it does not 
contain a single clause which might not have emanated 
from the Doctor himself. Dr. Muir would perhaps have 
framed a somewhat more liberal measure, though he, too, 
will soon be able to accommodate himself to its j)eculiari- 
ties, just as he learned to accommodate himself to the 
policy of Dr. Coo%. But no individual who voted with 
Dr. Chalmers can consistently acquiesce in the bill intro- 
duced by the Earl of Aberdeen. It will satisfy all the 
friends of unrestricted patronage and the old system, but 
it will not have the effect of dividing the friends of a still 
older and immensely better system. It will satisfy the 
class who never yet satisfied the people; but the people 
and their friends it will not satisfy, nor will it have the 
effect, we trust, of breaking down the majorities of the 
latter. 

" The people have at present the right," says the Dean 
of Faculty, in his pamphlet, — "and that they should have 
it is most fitting, — of submitting every ground of objection, 
of whatever kind, which they may entertain against the 
individual, to the clergymen of the presbytery." The 
Earl of Aberdeen, in his outline of the proposed bill, says 
nearly the same thing, only he says it in more words. 
The patron presents to the vacant parish ; and the licen- 
tiate, his choice, appears before the presbytery, who ap- 
point him to preach in the parish church to the people. 
The people then meet ; and if the regular communicants 
have objections to urge of any kind, the presbytery receive 
these, either in writing or otherwise. They next sit and 
decide upon them. If they are held to be insufficient, the 
settlement proceeds, and the presentee is intruded upon 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 243 

the people ; but if the presbytery deem them of sufficient 
force, he is set aside, and the patron presents another. 
And such are the main provisions of the bill introduced by 
the Earl of Aberdeen. What measure of protection does 
it furnish which did not exist under the old system ? It 
adds, perhaps, in some slight degree, to the power of our 
Church courts; and yet that power was certainly very 
considerable before. We find it stated by the Dean of 
Faculty, that he is aware of no limit either to the nature 
of the inquiries, or to the strictness of the examinations, to 
which presbyteries may subject licentiates. The Church 
may reject, he asserts, on any ground whatever. It has 
unlimited authority to set aside, — unlimited authority to 
choose. Now, if this view of the matter be correct, the 
Earl of Aberdeen, as we have said, is merely reenacting an 
existing law ; he is virtually doing nothing, and doing it 
at a considerable expense. But, granting that it is not 
strictly correct, — granting that some little additional 
power is conferred on our Church courts, — what are the 
Presbyterian people of Scotland to gain in consequence ? 
What benefits did they derive from the power vested in 
our Church courts for the greater part of the last century, 
or in what degree would they have profited had that 
power been rendered a very little greater? It was a 
power in almost every instance employed either against 
themselves or against the true types and representatives 
of the original Church, — the pious and devoted ministers 
whom they most loved and honored. Popular privileges 
are essentially different things from powers conferred on 
Church courts ; and we would just request our readers to 
mark how ready the *very men who are most forward in 
calumniating our better ministers, and in raising against 
them the cry of clerical ambition and clerical usurpation, 
are to extend to them, notwithstanding, those very powers 
which they unjustly accuse them of coveting, and how 
sedulously they would withhold every shadow of popular 
privilege. They profess to dread the encroachments of the 



244 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 

clergy, but it is only to conceal how bitterly they dislike 
all interference on the part of the people. 

It is scarce necessary to pass over the various statements 
of the Earl of Aberdeen. He quotes the First Book of 
Discipline after exactly the same fashion as Messrs. Paul 
and Pirie, and proves, to the satisfaction of his peers, that 
the scheme of planting vacant parishes laid down by Knox 
— a scheme of free election, be it remembered — was less 
popular than the one embodied in the veto act. The 
Upper House was, of course, no place in which his lordship 
had any chance of being set right on the point. To the 
theology of the question there is no reference. The seven 
suspended ministers are respectable; nor do legislators, 
like his lordship, often look higher. Men who are too 
virtuous to be punished as immoral are quite suited to 
teach religious truth; and to urge that there is a very 
opposite doctrine in the Bible would of course be fanati- 
cal. And yet it does seem but common sense to draw a 
distinction between negative and positive character ; nor 
does it appear very absurd to assert that men amenable to 
no law may be totally devoid of religion. Let us suppose 
his lordship's bill in its present form enacted into statute 
and acquiesced in by a majority of the Church. What 
would be the probable, nay, the inevitable, consequences ? 
The Presbyterian people of the country have been thor- 
oughly aroused on the agitated question, and aroused as a 
body. At no time were they indifferent to the principle 
which it involves, and very keenly could they feel, and 
very promptly could they act upon it. In what cases have 
the military been employed against the peasantry of Scot- 
land since the rebellion of 1745, except in cases of forced 
settlements? Or in what other cases have handfuls of 
poor laboring men extended their hours of labor, and lived 
still more hardly than before, that they might raise their 
fifties and hundreds of pounds, — at first, to contend hope- 
lessly in our courts of law against the intrusion of ministers 
whom in their conscience they believed not suited to edify 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 



245 



them ; and latterly, to build chapels for themselves, and 
support clergymen of their own choosing, to whose minis- 
trations they could trust ? Never did they cease to feel 
on the subject ; but hitherto they have been aroused to 
act or resist merely in detail, — aroused by parishes at a 
time. They are now aroused in a body ; and tremendous 
will be the revulsion of feeling if they find they have 
been deceived, and see the ministers in whom they trusted 
deserting them. We would say to our clergymen, there- 
fore, only give up the true non-intrusion principles em- 
bodied in the veto act, and you will soon find how fatal 
an error it was ever to have agitated them. Had you 
contented yourselves with the provisions of the old sys- 
tem, and suffered Dr. Cook or Dr. Muir to direct your 
councils, you might probably have continued to exist 
as an Establishment for thirty years : retreat from the 
advanced position which you have taken up, and you will 
be down in one-third of the time. You will find in the 
supposed case the descent of a falling Church regulated 
by the laws which accelerate the descent of other falling 
bodies, and fearfully increasing its rapidity in the succeed- 
ing periods. N~or will the Earl of Aberdeen be able to 
protect or support you. He will be wholly unable to 
protect or support himself. Yield to his counsels, and 
timorously retreat, — give up the cause of the people, — 
and you will go down first, and he will follow you. Con- 
tinue to occupy the Thermopylae in which you have taken 
up your position, and both may be saved. Your place is 
not a new one to the venerated ministers and elders of the 
much-loved Church of our fathers ; but never, perhaps, at 
any period, did so much depend on their decision as now 
depends on yours. 

Supposing, however, that tbere should be no revulsion 
of feeling on the part of the people, — supposing that they 
should at once sit down under the disappointment as 
quietly and passively as if all their present excitement was 
merely simulated, — how would Lord Aberdeen's measure 

21* 



246 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 



operate in their behalf? "We all know the kind of acquire- 
ments which enabled the intrusionists of the last and the 
present century to pass through the sort of vestibule formed 
by presbyteries into the body of the Church : a little tol- 
erable Latin, and a little somewhat less tolerable Greek ; 
the general smattering of learning which enables clever 
young men to write indifferent sense in middling bad Eng- 
lish, and justifies their high opinion of themselves; and, 
withal, that acquaintance with theology which implies a 
sort of half-knowledge of doctrines which they do not like, 
and which they cannot understand. Add to all this a degree 
of character which no police court in the kingdom would 
be able to impugn, and we have before us the qualifications 
of an accomplished licentiate prepared for ordination, an 
ornament to his order, and fitted, according to the estimate 
of Moderate presbyteries, to carry away the palm from 
Horsley. The people could neither love nor respect such 
a man, and by the more serious among them the less would 
he be loved and respected. Who that truly believes in the 
New Testament can think without concern of such a cler- 
gyman in connection with a parishioner anxiously awak- 
ened to inquire, with the jailer, " What shall I do to be 
saved?" — or without horror of him, associated with ter- 
rors awakened on a death-bed, — terrors regarding a future 
state of being, of which he knows nothing, and for which 
he cares as little ? He is presented, however, by the pa- 
tron; and these feelings on the part of the people, through 
which he is rendered unacceptable to them, are not per- 
mitted, by his lordship's provision, to weigh as anything. 
There is not a more definite assertion in his whole speech 
than that the mere unacceptableness of a presentee should 
be held no disqualification. The people must render their 
reasons. To affirm that in their consciences they believe 
the presentee unsuited to eclify them, is not stating a rea- 
son ; it is merely expressing a belief, — merely emitting 
such a declaration as the one required by the veto act. 
But, even permitting it to stand as a reason, what weight 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 



247 



would the suspended ministers of Strathbogie attach to it 
if urged by the parishioners of Marnoch against Mr. Ed- 
wards ? or into what else would it resolve itself, if carried 
before the higher courts, than into mere unacceptableness ? 
The "sheep know the voice of the good shepherd, and him 
they follow ; " but they will not follow a stranger. Why ? 
Because, believing him to be a stranger, he is unacceptable 
to them. Even supposing our Church courts disposed at 
the present time to receive as legitimate almost any objec- 
tions, and to act upon them, what guarantee have the peo- 
ple that this spirit is to continue ? " Good is ever strongest 
at its beginning," says Bacon ; " evil ever strongest in con- 
tinuance." The one exists only through unceasing effort ; 
the other gathers strength and grows up of itself. We 
remark, further, that we could not think very highly of 
even the honesty of men who, when deciding cases on un- 
confessed and disallowed grounds, could yet hypocritically 
urge that they decided them on grounds of an entirely dif- 
ferent kind. If unacceptableness is not to be recognized 
as a legitimate cause of rejection, we would ill like to see 
it made an actual cause, and some unsolid and paltry 
shadow of objection employed to screen it, meanwhile, as 
a sort of stalking-horse. Let the Church of Scotland walk 
in unsullied integrity, as becomes her character, — her 
motives and her actions alike open to the eye of day. 

No one could have anticipated, when she took up her 
present position, the length to which matters were to be 
carried against her. Doubts were perhaps entertained 
whether her hold of the secularities might not possibly be 
loosened by an enforcement of the principle of the veto ; 
but could even the shrewdest have imagined that she was 
to be inhibited from preaching the gospel ? It was perhaps 
deemed possible that the civil power might attempt pounc- 
ing on her temporalities, but it was not deemed possible 
that the civil power would attempt jostling her aside from 
her own proper place among things spiritual. She has 
been exposed to unlooked-for trouble. The tempest has 



248 



THE SCOTCH PEOPLE 



been unexpectedly severe; and mariners are sometimes 
content in such circumstances to return for shelter to 
the port which they have quitted. But what might be 
safety to them would be destruction to her. The heavily 
freighted and laboring vessel of the Church must not 
return. There is security in the haven to which she is 
bound. On the open sea, too, there is comparative safety, 
let the storm rage as it may; but inevitable shipwreck 
awaits her if she turn her prow towards the shore which 
she has left. 



THE SCOTCH PEOPLE AND THE PEE SB YTEEIAN 
CHUECH. 

The people of Scotland have had many compliments 
paid them, — some on the score of intelligence, some on 
the score of conduct; and that portion of them on whom, 
according to Wordsworth, "the Church has laid the strong 
hand of her purity," has been ever held to comprise, in the 
true, not the aristocratic sense of the term, their "better 
classes." The numerous body of whom the Cottar of Burns 
and the Peddler of "The Excursion" may be regarded as 
samples and specimens, are invariably to be found in com- 
munion with either the Established Church, or some one 
or other of the several branches of Evangelical Dissenters 
which have sprung from her. Who ever heard of an 
intelligent Scotch Papist rising from among the people? 
or where are even the Burnses and Tannahills that repre- 
sent the Scottish peasants and artisans of Episcopacy? 
The national type is decidedly Presbyterian in its intelli- 
gence, and still more decidedly so in its worth and its 
religion; and if we but strike off the Presbyterian cate- 
chumens and communicants of the country from the general 
mass, — the men either in full communion with the Church 
or her auxiliaries, or in the course of preparation for such 
a union, — - we leave behind merely a caput mortuum of 



AND THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 



249 



inert ignorance and superstition, or of fierce and reckless, 
and, in most instances, quite as ignorant infidelity. The 
class to which the Church is at present struggling to extend 
those privileges which so many of her saints and martyrs 
contended to secure to them, includes, in at least the pro- 
portion of nineteen twentieths, the worth, the religion, and 
the intelligence of the country. 

On an estimate such as this have the non-intrusionists of 
the Church founded the measure for the integrity of which 
they are now called to suffer and resist. Were the estimate 
different, the measure would also be different. Cases may 
easily be imagined in which the popular voice would be a 
very improper element in the choice or rejection of a 
Christian minister. An entire people may sink into infi- 
delity, as was the case with the French people during the 
first Revolution ; or they may lie sunk in a state of gross 
and savage paganism, as is the case at present with the 
great bulk of the inhabitants of New Zealand. Consult 
the choice of the one class — the more civilized one — 
regarding religion or its teachers, and they trick out for 
themselves a painted prostitute in the spangled gauds of 
the opera-house, and, after dignifying her with the name 
of the Goddess of Reason, they prostrate themselves before 
her in simulated worship ; or, more fantastic and more 
horrid still, they exhume the mouldering remains of the 
perished apostles of infidelity, and burn incense before the 
insensate and ghastly skulls. Consult the choice of the 
other class, and they seek" out for themselves their native 
priests to assist them in their human sacrifices. In both 
these instances Christianity is compelled to act on a differ- 
ent principle, — the principle on which the apostles acted, 
— not within the Church, but in their efforts to extend the 
Church. The missionary principle is the only one which 
applies to the exigencies of such cases, and the people are 
not asked to choose their teachers, but entreated to listen 
to the teachers which have been sent to them. It is only 
when a Christian body have been formed into a Church, as 



250 



THE SCOTCH PEOPLE , ETC. 



was the case when Knox drew up his First Book of Dis- 
cipline, that the principle now contended for can come 
into operation ; and it is in the well-founded belief that 
our parochial communicants form such a body, — that all 
of them are members of the Church of Scotland, — that 
very many of them are members of the Church of Christ, 

— that they have a deeper stake in the appointment of 
their ministers than ministers themselves can possibly 
possess in their collective character, — that it is a duty 
demanded of them individually to "try the spirits, whether 
they be of God," — that to this solemn injunction they are 
qualified to conform by Him who has laid it upon them; 

— it is, we assert, in this belief that our Church courts are 
now struggling to secure to the Christian people a direct- 
ing voice in the appointment of their pastors. If they but 
believed, on the contrary, that these very people were " a 
brute insensate herd," an " irresponsible, unreasonable " 
mob, they would never once think of introducing among 
them such a principle. They contend for their privileges, 
as those of a Christian people in full communion with a 
Christian Church. 

To the great bulk of our readers all this will seem suffi- 
ciently plain and obvious. They have all heard, and many 
of them have known from experience, of the general intel- 
ligence of the Presbyterian people of Scotland. Rarely 
do very superior men rise from among very ignorant masses. 
It. was a Scotch ploughman that described the " Cottar's 
Saturday Night ; " it was a Scotch shepherd that produced 
the "Queen's Wake;" it was a Scotch stone-cutter that 
wrote the " Lives of the British Painters, Sculptors, and 
Architects ; " it was a Scotch weaver that bequeathed to 
America its "Ornithology;" it was a Scotch mechanician 
who invented the steam-engine ; it was a Scotch herd-boy 
who first explored the hitherto misunderstood phenomena 
of the phases of the moon ; it was a Scotch mason who 
planned the great Caledonian Canal, and threw the bridge 
over the Menai. Now, from no "brute herd" could such 



MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 251 

men have arisen. The classes that look down upon the 
people as irrational have not yet produced better samples. 
Our readers are also aware of the religious character of 
our better Presbyterian people. They are aware, too, that 
though Milton rightly describes hypocrisy as the "vice 
which walks unseen," it is not the less true that there is a 
religious sympathy which draws the good together, and 
through whose revulsions and antipathies unconverted and 
secular-minded men are very soon discovered to be such. 
They are aware, in short, that pious laymen are as thor- 
oughly qualified to choose out for themselves pious, reli- 
gious teachers, or to detect those who are not so, as the 
general imperfection and infirmity of judgment which 
cling to our fallen nature, and which insinuate their mix- 
ture of error into all human affairs, allow us to predicate 
of qualification in any case. 



MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 

Theee is a smart paragraph taking the round of our 
Scotch newspapers, descriptive of a recent settlement in a 
northern parish. A vacancy occurred, through the death 
of the incumbent, and the parishioners were presented by 
the patron with a leet of four, two of whom were Moder- 
ates, and two of the opposite party. Means, it is stated, 
were taken by some of the friends of the latter to influence 
their choice. The Moderates were men of a genial tem- 
perament, and the people were told so. One of them, it 
was urged, was fond of fiddling. " He will be the more 
useful at weddings," said the people. Nor has he any 
abhorrence, it was added, of whisky punch. "Nor we 
either," said the people ; " we will go all the oftener to see 
him." In short, Moderatism triumphed on the principle 
alluded to by the poet, that " laymen have leave to dance 
if parsons play." The "fiddling priest" was preferred by 



252 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 

a sweeping majority; and the fact is adduced by our con- 
temporaries, either to show that Evangelism is struggling 
to emancipate the people to its own hurt, or that, in some 
cases at least, parishes choose well. We take the story as 
we find it, with certainly no proof that it is true, but as 
certainly with no suspicion that it is false; for we have 
seen quite enough of Scotland and its people to know that 
there are tracts of country in which incidents of the same 
nature might readily enough occur. We are acquainted 
with at least one district in the far north in which it had 
become a popular saying, at a time when smuggling was 
more common than it is at present, " Give us but a good- 
natured exciseman, and it matters little whether you give 
us a minister or no." 

One of the great evils of Moderatism is its tendency to 
extirpate religion altogether. It is no doubt a bad state 
of matters when dissent is rendered inevitable in a religious 
parish by the tyranny of a forced settlement ; and it is 
surely grievous to see the better people of the Church 
forced reluctantly, by congregations at a time, beyond her 
pale. But there may be a much worse state of matters 
than this. It is better that there should be religion in a 
parish, however harshly or cruelly it may be dealt with, than 
that there should be none; and there are parishes in Scot- 
land, though the number fortunately is not great, where, 
through the indifference and the irreligion of the people, 
there can be no forced settlements and no dissent. We 
resided for some time in a parish of this character about 
sixteen years ago. It lies to the south of Edinburgh ; and 
the parishioners, who were numerous at the time, were 
divided, by the accumulation of capital in the hands of a 
few, and the prevalence of the large farm system, into two 
extreme classes, — a class on the low level of the common 
laborer, which constituted the great bulk of the population, 
and a class, comprising some thirty or forty individuals 
and their families, who occupied a place in society rather 
higher than the middle one. Moderatism had been 



MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 253 

entrenched in the parish pulpit for well-nigh a century, 
and Moderatism in its most respectable form. It had 
neither lived grossly nor taught heresy. It had done no 
mischief ; it had done merely nothing ; and, instead of 
perverting, it had only suppressed the truth. The incum- 
bent, at the period to which we refer, was an indolent, 
elderly, respectable man, rather dull than otherwise, who, 
having labored in his youth, had a sermon for every Sab- 
bath in the year, and a few additional, and who very prop- 
erly asserted in them all, and challenged scrutiny, that it 
was well to be virtuous, and not so well to be vicious, and 
that fanaticism was a sore evil. The upper class deemed 
him a sensible man, and heard his one sermon once a week ; 
the lower had ceased attending church altogether ; and in 
scarce any other district of Scotland have we found a less 
intelligent or a more irreligious people. The respectable 
amono; them — for there are differences anion & all classes 
— passed the greater half of the Sabbath in their beds, 
rose to dinner, and, if the evening was fine, went saunter- 
ing about the fields; with the less respectable, Sabbath 
was a day of drunkenness and dissipation. It was impos- 
sible that a forced settlement could have taken place in 
the parish: there was not religion enough in it to suggest 
objections or nourish dissent. The people would have 
well-nio'h as soon thought of challenoino- the riffht of one 
of their proprietors to his lands as the right of a presentee 
to his glebe and stipend ; and had their choice been con- 
sulted in his nomination, a turn for fiddling and good fel- 
lowship would have been powerful recommendations. It 
affords us much pleasure to add, that a different state of 
matters is beginning to obtain in this forlorn parish from 
what obtained in it sixteen years ago. There is less immo- 
rality and less ignorance and apathy, and the poor people 
have learned to rise earlier on Sabbath, and to attend 
church. The old and highly respectable Moderate, after 
drawling through his last discourse, was succeeded by a 
clergyman who preaches Jesus Christ and him crucified ; 

22 



254 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 



and the class to whom the gospel was preached of old have 
gone to hear him. There could be such a thing as a forced 
settlement in the parish now, and a Secession chapel as a 
consequence. 

The apathy and indifference to religion which obtain in 
only a few districts in Scotland are very extensively spread 
over the sister kingdom, and dissent, in consequence, does 
not very often originate in the Church from what we may 
term an internal principle. The hereditary Dissenter, fixed 
in one locality, withdraws occasionally a few individuals 
from out the inert mass, or, as in the days of Whitefield 
and Wesley, the itinerating Dissenter succeeds in founding, 
though rarely, a meeting-house among them on the mission- 
ary principle. We have been informed, however, by a 
person intimately acquainted with the subject, that the 
main, though, as we have said, a not very active cause of 
dissent in England (for there are at present no very active 
causes in operation) originates within, not without, the 
pale of the Church, and in exactly the same way in which, 
as we have shown, it sometimes originates in Scotland. 
An evangelical Churchman of the Scott or Newton stamp 
is appointed to a charge ; the inert masses are aroused by 
those powerfully impressive doctrines of the gospel, fitted 
by Deity himself to agitate and awaken, and which, through 
the accompanying influence of the Spirit, render men wise 
unto salvation ; a church -going and religious people are 
trained up under his ministry; and, after performing his 
work of usefulness, he is summoned to his reward, and 
passes away. A stranger succeeds him, whose voice the 
sheep do not know, and whom therefore they will not fol- 
low, — perhaps, according to Cowper, " a cassocked hunts- 
man and a fiddling priest," — at least a person who, like 
our old pastor in the southern parish, neither knows the 
gospel nor cares for it, and who tells his poor hearers that 
it is good to be good, and bad to be bad, and wise to 
eschew fanaticism. Dissent is the inevitable consequence 
of such an appointment in such a parish; but who does 



MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 255 



• not see that the cause is a mixed one, and that the Evan- 
gelism of the one preacher has as certainly led to it as the 
Moderatism of the other ? Puseyism contends for what 
it terms the apostolic succession ; and, as the question is 
mixed up with religion, men of sense try to avoid smiling 
at its amazing absurdity, except When they are not seen. 
But there is a real apostolic succession to which it is well 
to attend, and the neglect of which is injurious to the 
Church of England now, and has inflicted incalculable 
injury on the Church of Scotland in the past. The true 
apostolic succession was kept up when Thomas Scott suc- 
ceeded John Newton ; but it would have been woefully 
broken had he been succeeded by the Rev. Titus Oates or 
the Rev. Dr. Dodd. Nor would the imposition of the Bish- 
op's hands have mended the matter in the least. Is our 
own Church in no danger of breaking the apostolic suc- 
cession in a certain district, should the ministrations of the 
Commission's ministers come to be superseded there? The 
people two years ago might have chosen a minister for his 
skill in fiddling ; but they would choose and reject on very 
different principles now. 

There is a sufficiently obvious inference which we draw 
from the fact furnished us by our contemporaries. The best 
argument against slavery is deduced from the degradation 
of character which slavery induces. It brutalizes those 
whom it oppresses, and renders them unfit for liberty ; but, 
so far from seeking for its apology in the abuses of slavery, 
and so far from arguing that it should be tolerated or main- 
tained because it is so execrable as to affect not only the 
physical, but also the mental condition of men, we contend 
that it is those very abuses, and those most mischievous 
effects, which render it so intolerable. Did it affect only 
the bodies of the unfortunates subjected to it, the aboli- 
tionist would be less the benefactor of his species, and 
more on a level with the class whose benevolent exertions 
are restricted to the prevention of mere animal suffering. 
Now, it is with Moderatism as with slavery. The one first 



256 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 



treats men as if they were unfit for liberty, and then 
renders them in reality unfit for it; the other first treats 
them as if they were unfit to exercise any influence in the 
appointment of their spiritual teachers, and then renders 
them unfit for it, by weaning out the religious feeling from 
among them, and the knowledge of religious truth. But 
where, in either case, does the remedy lie ? In destroying 
the power of the slaveholder, and emancipating the slave ; 
in removing the prop on which Moderatism has leant, and 
without which it must ultimately fall. In the one case we 
emancipate a slave unfit for freedom. Yes, but he will 
never be fitted for it in slavery. Set him free, and, as hap- 
pened to the king of Babylon of old, the beast's heart will 
leave him, and the heart of the man return. In the other 
case we extend a privilege to peoj>le, some of whom are 
unfitted to exercise it aright. True ; we are reminded of 
that by the very men who rendered them unfit. But the 
privilege is in very bad hands already. An unrestricted 
patronage gives ten inefficient Moderates to the Church, to 
darken the popular mind and paralyze the popular judg- 
ment, for every one that the people will give to it ; and, 
though a few mistakes will be made in those hapless par- 
ishes in which Moderatism has been longest encamped, the 
truth will be gradually spreading around them ; nor is it 
likely that they can long continue to reverse the miracle 
in Goshen, by remaining insulated districts of darkness 
walled by light. 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN versus THE PEOPLE OF 
SCOTLAND. 

The Earl of Aberdeen has determined to press the 
second reading of his bill. The Church of Scotland has 
had many enemies to contend with, — the priest, the pre- 
late, and the dragoon; Moderatism, Voluntaryism, the 



AND THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 



257 



Court of Session, and the author of an unreadable pam- 
phlet. And yet it is the Church of Scotland still. We 
trust it is also destined to survive his lordship's measure. 
The reader has heard of an eagle "struck at and killed" 
by a "mousing owl," but such prodigies do not happen 
every day; and we can hope that that Church of Christ, 
and the people, which outlived a century and a half of 
fierce persecution and the bitter hostility of five succeed- 
ing monarchs, — two of them at least skilful in playing 
on double meanings, and one of them remarkable for 
making long speeches and unreadable books, — may also 
outlive the assaults of a diplomatist skilful in concealing 
his intentions by carefully selecting his words, and of a 
special pleader, always more successful in making his 
addresses long than his meaning plain. It will be foul 
shame and dishonor to the people of Scotland if they 
suffer the Church of their fathers to sink beneath men of a 
lower grade than even the subsidiary tools of the enemies 
and persecutors who arrayed themselves against her of 
old. Our ancestors would have little recked the enmity 
of Rothes and Mackenzie, had not the craft of the one and 
the sophistry of the other been backed by the malignant 
despotism of Charles. 

It were well that the Presbyterian people of Scotland 
should consider how deeply their interests are involved in 
the present struggle. We address ourselves to them as 
one of themselves, — simply as one of the humbler people, 
come out a single step in advance in this quarrel to speak 
for the rest. We say, therefore, both for them and our- 
selves, that we have no other stake of equal importance 
and value with our stake in the Church. Toryism in its 
first elements, and regarded simply as feeling, does not, 
and cannot, constitute the politics of the common people ; 
there are, alas! few among them easy enough in their 
present position and circumstances to have no desire of 
change ; and what can be more natural than that men 
in the lower walks of society should solace themselves, 

22* 



258 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 



amid obscurity and toil, with the well-grounded belief 
— a belief sanctioned alike by reason and revelation — 
that they are in no degree an inferior race of creatures to 
the men set in authority above them; that their minds, 
in many instances, are of no lower order, and that most 
certainly their immortal souls are of no lower value? And 
hence a natural Whiggism, which must ever exist in the 
lower levels, whether the name exists or no. We are not 
political in making the remark ; we speak with no refer- 
ence to party ; we state merely a fact. In this whiggish 
feeling the politics of the people have their origin. The 
laboring man snatches at every semblance of reform, for 
reform promises to better his condition. But the experi- 
ence of eight years has shown how little mere statesman- 
ship can do for the masses. The men who labored twelve 
hours per day before the Reform Bill passed, labor twelve 
hours still ; taxation does not press less heavily on the 
poor now than it did then ; nor are the sufferings of the 
country less, nor has its crime diminished. Goldsmith was 
quite in the right when he asserted that little of the misery 
endured by mankind can be cured by either kings or laws. 
We would be unworthy of freedom were we to assert that 
there is no difference between the slave and the freeman, 
however sunk in poverty the freeman may be. There is a 
wide difference. The freeman may, and he often does, toil 
harder, and he may, and he often does, endure more. We 
ourselves have toiled as hard as any slave in the colonies, 
and for well-nigh as little — food and raiment. But in 
the midst of toil and of poverty the mind of the freeman 
grows, the intellect ripens, and the sentiments expand ; 
whereas the mind of the slave shrivels and decays. It is 
chiefly with reference to the better part of man that the 
poor mechanics and laborers of Scotland are more advan- 
tageously circumstanced in the present day than the vas- 
sals of Poland or the serfs of Russia. In addressing 
ourselves to this class — the "men of handicraft and hard 
labor" — we say it is incomparably of more advantage that 



AND THE PEOPLE OE SCOTLAND.- 



259 



you should have a voice in the nomination of 'your parish 
minister, than of the men who represent in Parliament the 
districts to which you belong. Members of Parliament 
can do very little for you, and you are now beginning to 
discover that such is the case. Ministers, if truly men of 
God, can do a great deal. We speak to the experience of 
such of our humbler countrymen as believe in sincerity the 
truths which the Scriptures reveal. We say, freedom is 
valuable to you, not because you fare better in consequence 
of freedom, nor yet because you toil less : such is not the 
fact; — you do not fare better, — you do not toilless: it 
is valuable to you from the independence of mind which 
it cherishes. Slavery has meannesses and vices inseparable 
from it, from which you are exempted ; and your circum- 
stances, though narrow, need be accompanied by none of 
that narrowness of intellect almost associated with slavery. 
And if such be the case, — if your advantages be chiefly 
advantages of mind, — shall we deem lightly of what 
relates to the better portion of the mind, and which 
involves its concerns for eternity ? You are not creatures 
of this world only. The God who, in his great munificence, 
bestowed upon you immortal souls, has revealed unto you 
their priceless value, and the only way, through the blood 
of a Redeemer, in which your salvation can be secured. 
And one of the chief means which he has appointed for 
bringing you into that only way is the preaching of his 
word. Of how much importance is it, then, that the 
word be faithfully preached to you ! 

Now, under the influence of the system espoused by the 
Earl of Aberdeen, and which his measure has been framed 
to reestablish, the people need not expect that the gospel 
will be faithfully preached to them. They have but to 
remember the past, in order to enable them to judge, in 
this respect, of the future. They have but to look at the 
class of clergymen by whom his lordship's measure is so 
zealously advocated, in order to conceive what sort of a 
Church the body would form of themselves. The ultimate 



260 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 



fate of the Earl of Aberdeen's bill will decide whether 
the patrimony of the Church is in reality to constitute, as 
was originally intended, the patrimony of the people, or 
whether, for somewhat less than half a generation, and ere 
it be thrown into the general fund, it is to be appropriated 
to the support of a corporation of time-serving clergymen, 
— a class of public stipendiaries of all others the most 
useless, and which the dictates of a wise economy would 
select first for suppression, in a course of financial reform. 
In what degree would Scotland be the better of a thousand 
empty churches, in which men ignorant of the gospel 
would, with their lifeless ministrations, desecrate the Sab- 
bath for hire ? It is impossible, in the nature of things, 
that the ministers of any religious establishment can be 
merely a harmless race. They must rank among either the 
benefactors or the enemies of a country; they must be 
as blessings or as curses to it. Our Saviour himself has 
declared that there can be no neutrality where religion is 
concerned, and that those who are not for him are against 
him. Nor need we appeal to history to show that the 
mere priest — the mere creature of patronage, the mere 
tool of power — has been ever an enemy of the general 
welfare and of popular improvement. The Church of 
Scotland must be either a great benefit or a great evil to 
the people ; it must be — what Knox and the first fathers 
of the Reformation intended — a dispenser of benefits, 
moral and intellectual, — a nurse of knowledge, of virtue, 
and religion; or it must bear as a nightmare on the ener- 
gies of the country, until at length the popular indignation 
gather strength and shake it off. It is well that the people 
of Scotland should know that these alternatives are in- 
volved in the adoption or rejection of the Earl of Aber- 
deen's bill. The future history of the Church cannot 
resemble its history in the past century. It must inevitably 
either sink into a lower depth of inefficiency, or rise into a 
more general and extended usefulness ; and it is well that 



AND THE PEOPLE OP SCOTLAND. 



261 



the people of Scotland should consider how necessary a 
result this must prove of the fate of his lordship's bill. 

In the last century the two antagonist parties of the 
Church were spread over her parishes like the wheat and 
the tares in the one field. An inefficient and time-serving 
clergy were in many instances the near neighbors of min- 
isters conscientiously faithful and eminently useful. The 
policy of our ecclesiastical courts was unequivocally bad, 
because our majorities were so ; but in many a parish and 
in many a district were the true objects of the Church 
accomplished, and the true interests of the people pursued, 
through the influence of a devout and diligent minority. 
But there are two causes which must effectually operate in 
preventing any return to such a state of things in the 
future. The old Presbyterian party in the Church have 
taught the patrons and the patronage-assertors of Scotland 
— men such as the Earl of Aberdeen — a lesson which 
they will not soon forget. They have taught them that so 
essentially popular is Presbyterianism in its original integ- 
rity, that it is impossible for it to acquire power without 
directly militating against the abuse of unrestricted pat- 
ronage ; and their influence, therefore, will be exercised in 
carefully excluding it. "What more natural than that for 
the future the patron should present to the people's hurt, — 
not to his own ? or that he should introduce exclusively 
into the Church members of the party whose very exist- 
ence is bound up in patronage, and who, with the instinct 
of self-preservation, would compass sea and land to preserve 
it in its unbroken malignity ? But the second cause craves 
more serious thought, as it regards a more urgent danger. 
What is to become of our present majority ? England 
saw two thousand of her Presbyterian clergy ejected from 
their livings and their churches in one day, and there were 
several hundreds of surely our best ministers ousted about 
the same time from the parishes of Scotland. Are our 
countrymen of the present age prepared for witnessing a 
similar exercise of power on the part of either the Court 



262 



THE EARL OF ABERDEEN", ETC. 



of Session or the House of Lords ? Are they prepared to 
give up the men whose sole crime it is that they have stood 
up to assert in the people's behalf, agreeably to our original 
standards, that no minister be "obtruded into any church 
contrary to the will of the congregation"? Are they 
prepared to give up the Church itself? For what is the 
Church, apart from its better ministers, but a piece of dead 
framework of importance to the hirelings who derive from 
it a provision for themselves and their families, but of no 
value whatever to the people ? Or do they think that our 
more devout and more excellent clergymen, in the face of 
their solemn professions, will learn to accommodate their 
consciences to the provisions of Lord Aberdeen's bill, and 
proceed forthwith, in union with the Dr. Cooks and Dr. 
Bryces of the Church, to force the Youngs and Edwardses 
of Auchterarder and Marnoch on the reclaiming -people ? 
Assuredly the poor man's main stake is involved in this 
quarrel. It would be the duty and the interest of the 
people of Scotland heartily to oppose his lordship did he 
merely set himself to rescind the Reform Bill. It has not 
done much for the poorer people. Legislation can neither 
lighten their toils, nor make them happier under them ; 
but at least some of the moral effects of the bill have been 
good. It has brought public opinion to bear against many 
abuses. It brought it to bear on the abolition of the slave- 
trade, and led to a great act of national justice in the final 
emancipation of the slave. But were the Earl of Aberdeen 
to blot the Reform Bill out of the statute-book, he would 
inflict but a slight and trivial injury on the people of 
Scotland, compared with the injury which he now con- 
templates. 

That people possess a power in the present day which 
they did not possess in the days of Sir George Mackenzie, 
nor yet in the days of Bolingbroke. We are told that, 
shortly after the Union, the Scotch representatives found 
themselves entirely lost among the Commons of England, 
who opposed them in every national question, in the 



DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY, ETC. 263 



proportion of nearly ten to one. But they soon discovered 
a remedy. The English were divided into two great and 
nearly equally balanced parties ; and though the forty-five 
Scots formed a very poor minority of themselves, they 
found that whatever side they chose to range themselves 
upon became straightway the majority. They discovered 
that they could adjust the scales, though they could not 
outweigh even the lightest of them; and they became 
influential in consequence. Parties in the present day are 
more equally balanced than they were in the days of Queen 
Anne; and it were well for Scotchmen to consider whether 
it be not their duty to give that prominence to the interests 
of their country now which their ancestors did a hundred 
and twenty years ago. Questions of the first magnitude 
should always have the first place assigned to them ; and 
it is of immensely more importance to even the Conserva- 
tive Presbyterians of Scotland that the Earl of Aberdeen's 
measure should be defeated, than that the Earl of Aberdeen 
should form the member of a new cabinet. Our contem- 
porary the Globe has a pertinent remark on the subject : 
" We have not a particle of doubt," says this able paper, 
"in affirming that the spiritual independence of the Scot- 
tish Church, and the efficiency of the will of the Scottish 
people, are things the fate of which politicians have not 
to determine, and which determine the fate of politicians." 



DEBATE IN THE EDINBUEGH PRESBYTERY ON LORD 
ABERDEEN'S BILL. 

In the debate which Mr. Miller described in the following article, 
the bill by which Lord Aberdeen had essayed to terminate the 
agitation in the Church of Scotland fell under the logic and sar- 
casm of Dr. Cunningham. His lordship saw fit to withdraw his 
measure. — Ed. 



264 DEBATE m THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY 



The present struggle threatens to be a protracted one. 
But there is no lack of symptoms on the part of both the 
friends and the opponents of the popular principle, which 
indicate the final result. Our readers will find a full report 
in our columns of the proceedings of the Edinburgh Pres- 
bytery at its meeting of Wednesday last. The chief busi- 
ness of the meeting arose out of the present position of the 
Church in connection with the attempt of the Earl of 
Aberdeen to convert into law the mischievous absurdities 
of the Dean of Faculty [Hope] ; and the decision arrived 
at by the presbytery, by an overpowering majority, and 
after a discussion of six hours, was to petition Parliament 
against his lordship's bill, as directly subversive of the 
spiritual independence of the Church, and wholly at vari- 
ance with the genius of Presbytery. No report, however 
literal, can convey an adequate idea of a debate so ani- 
mated and interesting as that which took place on this 
occasion. There is a vast dhTerence between a series of 
speeches spread over a few closely-printed columns, and a 
spirit-stirring viva voce discussion ; but our report must be 
very defective indeed if it does not convey the impression 
of strength contending with weakness, and show that there 
was much feebleness and much timidity on the one side, 
*and much courage and great power on the other. The 
cause, backed by the decision of our law courts, and by a 
considerable portion of the wealth and a large proportion 
of the aristocracy of the country, must ultimately go down, 
for there is no heart and no strength in it. 

We fain wish we could give our readers at a distance 
some such idea of the late meeting of presbytery as we 
ourselves have had an opportunity of forming. The Pres- 
bytery of Edinburgh is the most ancient in the kingdom. 
It may be regarded as the nucleus of the Scottish Church. 
According to Knox, "before that there was any public 
face of the true religion in this realm, it had pleased God 
to illuminate the hearts of many private persons, who, 
straightway quitting the idolatry of Papistry, began to 



ON LORD ABERDEEN'S BILL. 



265 



assemble themselves together." They elected out of their 
number good and judicious men, such as "God by his 
grace" had best qualified for their elders and teachers; and 
from this small beginning, principally within the town of 
Edinburgh, arose the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. 
There is nothing to mark the antiquity of the presbytery in 
the hall in which they assemble. It is a modern erection, 
lighted from above, with a few portraits suspended on the 
walls, and a bust or two placed on brackets. There is a 
gallery for strangers, of limits all too scanty on occasions 
such as that of Wednesday last, and the members occupy 
the area below. From a front seat, which we were fortu- 
nate enough to secure, we could overlook the whole. The 
parties, instead of being ranged on opjDOsite sides, were 
mixed up together, and apparently for a very excellent 
reason — the non-intrusionists were all too numerous, and 
their opponents too few. The original Presbyterians bid 
fair to fill all their own house, as at first; and if Mod- 
eratism insists on retaining its own side, it must proceed 
forthwith, as in the days of Gillespie, to eject and expel. 

Some of the better known names in the presbytery are 
borne by men of very striking appearance. Dr. Muir is an 
eminently handsome man — thin, gentlemanly, dignified, 
tastefully dressed, with a well-formed head of moderate 
size, such as a phrenologist would expect to find on the 
shoulders of a person rather of fine taste than of compre- 
hensive genius. We would have deemed him quite in his 
proper place in the Upper House of Parliament, either as 
a lord spiritual or lay. Dr. Gordon is also a strikingly 
handsome man, but with a much more remarkable develop- 
ment of head. It is a head of the Melancthon type, — 
high, erect, with an overpowering superstructure of senti- 
ment on a narrow base of propensity, and a forehead rising, 
as in the case of Shakspeare and Sir Walter Scott, to the 
top of the coronal region. Combe, in one of his phreno- 
logical works, give a print of a similar head, and states 
that among the heads of many thousand criminals which 

23 



266 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY 



he has examined, he had in no instance found a resembling 
development. If, however, the Earl of Aberdeen carry his 
measure, prisons will be quite the place to find them in, 
and the phrenologist will require to modify his statement 
by a note. Among the figures of the younger members of 
the court, that of Mr. Guthrie is one of the most striking. 
He is an erect, lathy, muscular man, of rather more than 
six feet two inches, who would evidently not have been 
idle at Drumclog, and who, if employed at all, could not 
be employed other than formidably. Though apparently 
under forty, the hair is slightly touched with gray, and 
the features, though beyond comparison more handsome 
than those of his ancestor the martyr, bear decidedly 
a similar cast and expression. The appearance and figure 
of Mr. Cunningham is scarcely less striking than that 
of his friend Mr. Guthrie. He is tall, but not so tall, 
though rather above than below six feet, and powerfully 
built. His head is apparently of the largest size, — of 
the nemo me impune lacessit calibre; and the tempera- 
ment is of that firm bilious cast which gives to size its 
fullest effect. 

Mr. Cunningham commenced the debate in a speech of 
tremendous power. The elements were various: a clear 
logic, at once severely nice and popular; an unhesitating 
readiness of language, select and forcible, and well fitted 
to express every minuter shade of meaning, but plain, and 
devoid of figure ; above all, an extent of erudition, and an 
acquaintance with Church history, that, in every instance 
in which the argument turned on a matter of fact, seemed 
to render opposition hopeless. But what gave peculiar 
emphasis to the whole was what we shall venture to term 
the propelling power of the mind, — that animal energy 
which seems to act the part of the moving power in the 
mechanism of intellect, — which gives force to action and 
depth to the tones of the voice, and impresses the hearer 
with an idea of immense momentum. There were parts 
of Mr. Cunningham's speech in which he reminded us of 



ox lord Aberdeen's bill. 



267 



Andrew Melville when he put down bishops Barlow and 
Ban craft, and shook the lawn sleeves of the latter; and 
we could not help wishing that, by any possibility, circum- 
stances should be so ordered as to afford him an opportunity 
of trying conclusions face to face with the Earl of Aber- 
deen. His powers of sarcasm are great, and of a peculiar 
character. He first places some important fact or argu- 
ment in so clear a light that there remains no possibility 
of arriving at more than one conclusion regarding it. He 
then sets in close juxtaposition to it the absurd inference 
or crooked misstatement of an antagonist, and bestows 
upon his ignorance or his absurdity the plain and simple 
name. White is always white with Mr. Cunningham, and 
black black, and he finds no shade of gray in either. His 
confidence in matter of fact, based on an extent of erudi- 
tion recognized by all, tells with a crippling effect on his 
oj)ponents. He referred, during his speech, to the often- 
repeated sophism denying the non-intrusion of the early 
reformers — Knox, Calvin, and Beza. What, he asked, do 
the Earls of Aberdeen and Dalhousie know of the opinions 
of these men ? This much, and no more. Lord Medwyn 
inserted in his speech on the Auchterarder case a few 
partial and garbled extracts from the writings of Calvin 
and Beza, which, in their broken and unconnected state, 
seemed to bear a meaning at variance with the principles 
which the men in reality held. Mi\ Robertson, of Ellon, 
quoted the passages at second-hand, not omitting even the 
errors of his lordship's printer. The Earls of Dalhousie 
and Aberdeen quoted them at third-hand from Mr. Robert- 
son. And such is the entire extent of their lordships' 
information on the subject, and such the amount of their 
authority. He then proceeded to show what the views of 
the reformers on non-intrusion really were ; — that they all 
held, with the ancient fathers, the doctrine for which the 
Church is now contending. "There is no member of this 
presbytery," he added, "who will question the fact." And 
he was quite in the right ; no member did question it. 



268 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY 



He offered to prove, further, that Dr. Muir, on the agitated 
question, holds exactly the principles of Cardinal Bellar- 
mine ; and the Doctor took particular care not to demand 
the proof. 

Mr. Cunningham was followed by the Lord Provost of 
Edinburgh, — a gentleman who has been a reformer all his 
life long, and who evidently feels that, in the present strug- 
gle, he is occupying exactly his old ground. He was 
listened to with much respect. His remarks were charac- 
terized by a vein of sound good sense and much gentle- 
manly feeling. Dr. Muir then rose to express his approba- 
tion of the Earl of Aberdeen's bill. 

How, we asked, when listening to the powerful logic of 
Mr. Cunningham, will Dr. Muir contrive to find answers to 
arguments such as these? We might have spared our- 
selves the query. Dr. Muir did not attempt finding answers 
to them. He spoke as if no one had spoken before him. 
He reiterated all his old assertions, and assured the meeting 
that he was thoroughly conscientious and quite in earnest. 
Pascal could mortify his senses by shutting his casement 
on a delightful prospect. Dr. Muir restrains the reasoning 
faculty in the same way out of a sense of duty, and eschews 
argument as a gross temptation. When convicted of an 
absurdity, he talks of persecution, and clings to an exposed 
misstatement with the devotedness of a faithful nature 
true to a friend in distress. He carries on every occasion 
all his facts and all his opinions home with him. Nothing 
adds to their number, — nothing diminishes them; and 
when the day of battle comes, he brings them out with him 
again. His troops fight none the worse for being killed ; 
they rise, all gory, like Falstaff's opponents, and fight by 
the hour ; his antagonists complain, with Macbeth, that his 
dead men come to " push them from their stools." 

He was followed by Mr. Penny — a smart gentleman, 
who is tedious with very marked effect — on the same 
side, and succeeds, when he is particularly pathetic, in mak- 
ing his audience gay. He was liberal in tendering to the 



on lord Aberdeen's bill. 



269 



presbytery the benefit of his law, and generously advised 
them to submit to the Court of Session, without cherishing 
the remotest expectation of being paid for his advice. He 
excels, too, in divinity. His speech gradually rose into a 
sermon ; and when he came to the most serious part of it, 
the gallery laughed. He was succeeded, in reply, by the 
Rev. Mr. Begg, of Liberton. 

Of all the gentlemen whom the caricaturists have failed 
in rendering ridiculous, Mr. Begg has escaped best. Some 
of the others are striking likenesses. There is no likeness 
in the case of Mr. Begg. There is no exaggeration of fea- 
ture or figure for the artist to catch, and so he has caught 
none. He is a young, good-looking man, rather above the 
middle size, with a well-developed forehead, — frank, vig- 
orous, and energetic. His brief speech contained one or 
two pointed hits, which told with excellent effect, and a 
historical statement of much importance in its bearing on 
the Earl of Aberdeen's bill. 

He was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. M'Farlane. We are 
admirers of the good sense and poetical feeling, but not of 
the style, of Harvey; whereas the Rev. Mr. M'Farlane 
seems to admire only his style. He rounds his sentences 
after the same model, and leaves out only the poetry and 
the good sense. His flowers are all sun-flowers. Pliny 
speaks of an orator who used to set his periods to music : 
we are convinced that, if Mr. M'Farlane were well watched, 
he would be found modulating his periods by the full sym- 
phonies of the Jewsharp. All feel, however, that when 
delivered in public they want their necessary and original 
accompaniment; and we think the reverend gentleman 
should benefit by the hint. A respectable and sensible 
man, a Seceder, sat beside us. "Ah," he exclaimed, with 
a groan, " a weak brother ! " The Rev. Mr. Bennie fol- 
lowed, in a sparkling, witty speech, that at once awakened 
the gallery, and cost the moderator a considerable amount 
of trouble. All was extempore : there was not one idea 
which did not bear reference to some previous remaii^from 

23* " ' 



270 



REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 



the opposite side, and yet every sentence had the point of 
an epigram. The labored dullnesses of an inane and feeble 
mind have rarely been more pointedly contrasted with the 
spontaneous felicities of a mind singularly ingenuous and 
fertile than on this occasion. Drs. Clason and Gordon fol- 
lowed in addresses, brief, but of great moral weight, and 
conceived in an admirable spirit ; and the whole was 
wound up by Mr. Cunningham. 

Nothing more tended to the spread of the Reformation 
than the public disputations between the reformers and 
their opponents. There was breadth of principle and force 
of argument on the one side, united to generous feeling and 
conscious integrity ; and merely sophistry, meanness, mis- 
statement, and the disreputable shifts of a petty ingenuity, 
on the other. On every occasion on which they met, the 
better cause prevailed ; and the people saw and felt that it 
did. Good argument is always popular argument. If Dr. 
Muir and his friends really wish well to the people of Scot- 
land, they could still hold by their peculiar opinions, and 
yet be of great service to them. All that is necessary is to 
grant their opponents such opportunities of meeting with 
them in the various parishes of the country as they afforded 
them at the meeting of the Edinburgh Presbytery on Wed- 
nesday last. 



EEVIVAL IN ALNESS. 

The Moderate and Evangelical parties, differing in their views of 
Church government, differed also, throughout the whole course of 
their history, in their cast of sentiment touching the religious life. 
The one, pushing the supernatural element in Christianity gently 
into the background, and seeking no more, by way of realizing the 
Christian character, than a general observance of moral precept, a 
polite tranquillity of feeling, and a cultured elegance and propriety, 
recoiled in timorous suspicion from all religious emotion, sudden in 



REVIVAL IX ALXESS. 



271 



occurrence and transcendent in degree. The other, throwing the 
supernatural element into commanding prominence, explicitly 
declaring the exertion of Divine and creative energy indispensable 
in the formation of Christian character, regarded every agitation of 
the popular mind arising from a religious cause with that deep, 
reverent, and sympathizing interest 'which befitted a direct manifes- 
tation of Divine power. This, like every other distinction between 
the parties, was vividly apprehended and profoundly understood by 
Mr. Miller. It is brought out in the following .article. ' ; Dr. Muir's 
Declaration," to which reference is made, can be easily imagined as 
a manifesto on the part of certain of the Moderate leaders. — Er>. 

We extract the following interesting notice of one of 
the recent revivals in Ross-shire, from the Inverness Cou- 
rier of "Wednesday last. It conies from the pen of a cor- 
respondent of that paper, — a person who seems to have 
witnessed what he describes in no light or irreverent spirit ; 
and we have been favored with several private letters on 
the subject from the same part of the country, which cor- 
roborate his statements : 

" The great religious movements which are taking place in various 
quarters of this county are drawing a large share of attention : and 
a short account of what has occurred in the parish of Alness may 
not be uninteresting to some of your readers. 

The usual fast-day preparatory to the celebration of the Lord's 
Supper was held on Thursday, the 30th ultimo : but nothing remark- 
able was observed on that day. The first symptoms of anything like 
an awakening made their appearance on the Friday evening, when, 
under the ministrations of that faithful and self-denying servant of 
God, the Eev. Mr. Macdonald. of Ferintosh. a considerable number 
were brought under concern, and made to cry out. beneath the 
stings of an awakened conscience. 1 What must we do to be saved? ' 
During the sermon which completed the duties of the sacramental 
Sabbath, the movements in the congregation, which had been begun 
on the Friday evening, were increased to a much greater extent. 
Then, but more especially on the services of the following day 



272 



REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 



(Monday), one could not cast his eyes around in any direction 
among the thousands collected on the occasion, without witnessing 
in almost every half dozen of hearers one, if not more, deeply 
moved, — some sobbing audibly ; others, evidently by the greatest 
effort, restraining themselves from bursting out aloud ; while many, 
utterly unable to command their emotions, gave vent in loud screams 
to their agonized feelings. Nor was this confined to any age or sex. 
The young and the aged, the gray-headed man and the child of 
tender years, might everywhere be observed deeply affected ; and 
we conceive we are within the mark when we say, that on this occa- 
sion many hundreds were- brought under serious impressions ; for 
there is scarcely a family in the district but has one, two, or more of 
its members under deep convictions. It was truly a heart-stirring 
sight ; and we could wish that those who make a mock of such scenes 
could have looked upon it. Insensible to every good and holy feel- 
ing must he have been who could have beheld it with cold indiffer- 
ence. 

" When witnessing or hearing of such events, one is irresistibly 
led to ask, Is this the work of the Spirit of God ? Though time 
alone can give a perfectly satisfactory answer to this question, yet 
there are circumstances attending this particular work which tend 
to show that it is indeed genuine, and not spurious. This revival 
has followed the means which the word of God teaches to employ. 
Prayer-meetings have for some time been established through the 
parish by the faithful and zealous clergyman, Mr. Flyter, who has 
now had the satisfaction of seeing his labors blessed and his suppli- 
cations answered. There was nothing in the instrument which could 
lead us to attribute the result to him. He is well known to all who 
heard him ; and his style of preaching is as familiar to most of them 
as is that of their own clergymen ; and he has been often known to 
proclaim the thunders of Sinai with as much, if not with greater 
force, on previous occasions. Indeed, the terrors of the law and 
the consolations of the gospel were, as they ever ought to be, blended 
together." 

We passed a few days during the summers of the last 
two years in the scene of the revival. It is a semi-High- 
land district of considerable extent, bordered by the Frith 
of Cromarty on the south, and ascending, towards the 
north, from a richly variegated and comparatively populous 



REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 



273 



level, into a mountainous and thinly-inhabited tract of 
country. The whole forms a portion of what has been 
termed the land of the Monroes, — a clan described by 
Buchanan as one of the most warlike in Scotland, and 
which, unlike most of our Highland clans, embraced, at an 
early period, the doctrines of the Reformation. The name 
has since been widely spread. It gave to Gustavus Adol- 
phus some of his bravest general officers, and to the United 
States of America one of their best presidents. But though 
now considerably mixed with other names, through the 
breaking up of the feudal system, it still abounds in the 
district. The people in general are a simple, but not 
unintelligent race, and warmly attached, through the asso- 
ciations of nearly three centuries, to the Church of Scot- 
land. There is a hollow still shown among the hills, where 
their ancestors used to meet for religious worship during 
the persecution of Charles II. Their minister of that 
period had been amongst the faithful few who, in the 
northern portion of the kingdom, had chosen rather to 
quit their livings than outrage their consciences; and, 
despite the utmost efforts of the Bishop of Ross, — as 
thorough an Erastian as Dr. Bryce himself, — he succeeded 
in finding protection among his people for nearly thirteen 
years after the term of his ejectment. In the year 1675, 
say* Wodrow, he celebrated the communion on the bor- 
ders of his parish, amid an immense concourse ; and " so 
plentiful was the effusion of the Spirit, that the oldest 
Christians present never witnessed the like." Among many 
others, says the historian, one poor man, who had gone to 
hear him merely out of curiosity, was so affected, that when 
some of his neighbors blamed him for his temerity, and 
told him that the bishop would punish him for it by taking 
away his horse and cow, he assured them that in such a 
cause he was content to lose not merely all his worldly 
goods, but his head also. Eventually, however, the good 
minister fell into the hands of his enemies, and, after wear- 
ing out many years, amid squalor and wretchedness, in a 



274 



REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 



dungeon of the Bass, he was released but to die — a vic- 
tim to the cruel hardships to which he had been subjected. 
The parish at a later period, under the ministry of the 
author of an admirable Treatise on Justification, well 
known to theologians (Mr. Fraser, of Alness), was the 
scene of a second revival. It took place sometime about 
the middle of the last century ; nor had its effects wholly 
disappeared at the time of our last visit. The district had 
still its race of patriarchal worthies, though every year was 
lessening their number, for the greater part of them had 
reached the extreme verge of life. There was, besides, a 
hereditary respect and reverence among the people in gen- 
eral for the beliefs and the services of religion. Thev 
remembered their fathers — the lives which they had 
lived, and the hope*in which they had died ; and the recol- 
lection had its legitimate influence. It has been common 
with skeptics of a low order — men who absurdly borrowed 
their analogies more from the principles of human juris- 
prudence than from the inevitable laws of nature — to 
challenge the great truth of revelation, so often exemplified 
in the history of nations and of families, that the iniquities 
of the ancestors are visited on the descendants. And yet 
we see in a thousand instances that, from the very nature 
of things (another name for the will of Deity), the law 
must as certainly exist as the law of gravitation itself. 
The corresponding truth embodied in the same command- 
ment, that blessings and mercies are conferred on thousands 
among the posterity of the faithful and the devoted, has 
been less marked and seldomer challenged ; but it is, like 
the other, a truth often confirmed by experience, and in no 
cases more frequently than in cases of revivals. Where 
the Divine fire has been kindled of old, it seems ever readi- 
est, though often after long intervals, to ascend anew ; and 
the cause, so far as such things can be accounted for on 
understood principles, seems to be the one just hinted at 
in the case of the parishioners of Alness. There survive 
in such localities fond and respectful recollections of the 



REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 



275 



worth of the departed, associated with what we may term 
a traditional belief in the excellence of Christianity; and 
thus the mind is kept more open to receive as good what 
their ancestors proved and testified to be emphatically so. 

We visited Alness, on the last occasion, early in the 
May of 1839, when the excellent clergyman of the parish 
was on the eve of setting out for the General Assembly. 
The Auchterarder case had been just decided in the House 
of Lords, and the present difficulties of the Church were 
very generally anticipated by the graver parishioners. 
There was a deep interest excited in this remote district. 
Dr. M'Crie, in writing of the General Assembly seven 
years ago, laments the indifference with which its meetings 
had come to be regarded by the people, compared with 
the deep interest which their fathers had felt in them. 
" Where," he asks, " is the general anxiety of the country, 
and where the fervent supplications for the countenance 
and direction of Heaven, in the deliberations of the Assem- 
bly, which were wont to resound from the most distant 
glens and mountains of Scotland ? " We could have in- 
stanced at least one district. The "men" of Alness, at 
the time of our visit, were holding their prayer-meetings 
in behalf of the Church; and we need hardly say on 
which side their minister came to register his vote. Mod- 
eratisni has disturbed the country with its forced settle- 
ments, but it never yet excited the spleen of a newspaper 
press by its revivals, and it always flourishes most where 
there are no prayer-meetings to perplex its operations. 

We perceive the minister of an adjacent parish t has 
affixed his name to Dr. Muir's declaration, — a circumstance 
which has enabled his parishioners fully to understand it. 
This gentleman has been now about four and twenty years 
in the enjoyment of the temporalities of the cure. When 
obtruded upon the parish, it contained no Dissenters. The 
people, like their neighbors, were marked by their church- 
going habits; and the church, a roomy and commodious 
building, was filled every Sunday from gable to gable. 



276 



REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 



About one per cent, of the parishioners attend, it now. 
"Within the last few years a meeting-house has sprung up 
in its neighborhood. Some of the younger people during 
the time of divine service wander into the fields ; the rest, 
who have not quitted the Church, travel far to attend the 
ministrations of the clergymen of other parishes. The 
whole congregation did not comprise twenty persons when 
we heard sermon under the intrusionist about a twelve- 
month ago, and of these nearly one-half had fallen asleep 
ere the middle of the service. And such, as instanced in 
Alness and this unfortunate parish, are the comparative 
merits and comparative popularity of the two parties in 
the Church. Would Sir Robert Peel and the Earl of 
Aberdeen deem it a stroke of profound statemanship to 
pass a measure which would have the effect of ejecting 
from their charges men such as the minister of Alness, and 
of setting men such as his neighbor in their place ? And 
yet there is scarce a Presbyterian in Scotland so ignorant 
as not to know that such would be the effect of the bill 
which the one so unwillingly relinquished, and which the 
other would have supported so readily. 

The Rev. Mr. M'Donald, of Ferintosh, whose labors have 
been so signally honored in the recent revivals in Ross- 
shire, has been long known and esteemed in that part of 
the country as one of the soundest and most zealous divines 
in the Church. How marvellously have times changed 
within the last twenty years ! Little more than that period 
has elapsed since this gentleman was summoned to the bar 
of the General Assembly for preaching, in the Strathbogie 
and Aberdeen districts, exactly the same doctrines which 
have been rendered so powerful to alarm and awaken within 
the last few months in Tarbat, Tain, and Alness. He had 
been guilty of preaching the gospel where, in these days, 
the gospel was very rarely heard. Dr. Mearns, of Aberdeen, 
another of Dr. Muir's supporters, took the lead among his 
assailants ; but, notwithstanding all the energy and zeal 
of the party, the case unaccountably broke down, and 



REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 



277 



Mr. M'Donald was discharged unharmed. His assailants, 
however, contrived to legislate on the subject by way of 
prevention, and embodied their decision in the shape of 
a declaration, denouncing it as " irregular and unconsti- 
tutional for a minister of the Church to perform divine 
service in the meeting-house of a Dissenter, or, during 
his journeys from place to place, in the open air, in other 
parishes than his own." We find a masterly review of the 
whole case, by Dr. Andrew Thomson, in the " Christian 
Instructor " for 1819; and rarely has irreligion and intol- 
erance, when masquerading under the forms of an eccle- 
siastical decision, been more powerfully exposed. The 
Doctor had to battle in the minority in these days, and to 
endure many a defeat; but his labors were not in vain. 
He did not influence his opponents, for that would have 
required something more than argument, — something on 
their part as well as on his, — candor, perhaps, and Christian 
principle; but the country listened to him; and so exten- 
sive and so marked has been the change, that the very 
individual whom he then defended against the wrath of 
the Presbytery of Strathbogie was empowered by the 
Church last spring to do in that district what he then 
narrowly escaped being thrust out of the Church for doing. 
Mr. M'Donald, of Ferintosh, was one of the ministers lately 
deputed by the Commission to preach in Strathbogie. 

There is much comfort in the reflection, that in the time 
of the Church's difficulties her adorable Head should be 
thus manifesting himself in her favor. It will matter little 
who may be among her enemies if he rank among her 
friends. The Book of Providence contains many difficult 
passages; but there are others of which the meaning seems 
comparatively obvious; and of these not a few refer to 
periods of revival in the Church. The time of the second 
Reformation was one of these. The purpose of mercy at 
that period extended to more than individuals, — it em- 
braced the entire Church. There w#s a season of severe 
and protracted trial at hand ; and the infusion of new 

24 



278 



REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 



vigor gave earnest that the " strength was to be according' 
to the need," and that she was to survive the struggle, 
and ultimately to triumph in it. Had she been destined 
to extinction, her vigor would not have been increased. 
Another very remarkable period of revival occurred in the 
west of Scotland shortly after the time of the Secession. 
The Church had sunk into a state of miserable depression. 
Her strength seemed passing wholly from her to the body 
of devout and venerable men whom the high-handed 
majorities that constituted at once her weakness and her 
shame had thrust beyond her pale ; her people were joining 
them in thousands; and it seemed as if the mere caput 
mortuum that remained behind could not long continue to 
exist. The breath of public opinion in less than half an 
age would have acquired strength enough to sweep it 
away ; for, though an Establishment has existed in Ireland 
without the people for centuries, it could not exist in 
Scotland without them for half a century. The characters 
of the two nations are essentially different. At this crisis, 
however, the separation to a considerable degree was staid. 
The revival at Cambuslang, Kilsyth, Kirkintilloch, and 
Muthill, took place. There was thus proof vouchsafed 
that, though many of God's people had left the Church, 
God himself had not left it ; and, in consequence, thousands 
who would have otherwise gone over to the Secession 
remained in her communion. Chatham, as quoted by 
Junius, could speak of infusing a new portion of health 
into the constitution of the country, to enable it to bear 
its infirmities. There was thus a new portion of health 
infused into the Church, and she was enabled to bear the 
infirmities under which she would otherwise have sunk, 
until a day when, with invigorated powers, she has begun 
to shake them off. The history of the future can alone 
read the legitimate comment on the economy of Provi- 
dence in the present revivals ; but who can doubt that 
they are tokens of mercy ? They read a lesson to religious 
Dissenters which they would do well to ponder in connec- 



CONSERVATISM 'ON REVIVALS. 



279 



tion with the advice given by Gamaliel to the Jewish 
Council. If God be for us, assuredly they should not be 
against us. 

CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 

"My friend Smart," said Johnson, " used to show the 
disturbance of his mind by falling upon his knees and 
saying his prayers in the street. He was deemed mad, 
sir ; and yet, rationally speaking, it is much greater mad- 
ness not to pray at all, than to pray as poor Smart did ; 
though I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, 
that, through the generality of the neglect, people never 
think of calling their understandings in question." Now, 
what was strong sound sense in the days of Johnson is 
very excellent sense still. If a man look exclusively to 
the approbation of his neighbors, it is very unsafe for him 
to deviate from the ordinary course, and quite as much so 
to rise above the common level of conduct as to sink 
beneath it. There is a mediocrity of virtue which it is 
dangerous to exceed, and a subdued style of religion, 
" content to dwell in decencies forever," to which men 
who are often loudest in their praise of toleration extend 
their tolerance exclusively. The Judaism of Gamaliel 
would have been esteemed by this class as the well-regu- 
lated religion of a man of sense ; the overpowering con- 
victions of Paul, after his journey to Damascus, they would 
have denounced as fanaticism. They deem the form of 
Christianity which can exist independently of conversion a 
much better thing than the Christianity which conversion 
must precede ; and regard the man .whom the sense of an 
awful futurity never moved as a wiser person than the 
man whom it moves so deeply that he proves unable to 
conceal his feelings. 

Now, to the unrecked madness df this class — the class 
whose number, according to Johnson, prevents people from 



280 



CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 



calling their understandings in question — does the recent 
work of revival in Scotland owe the opposition which it 
has received, and the contumely which has been heaped 
upon it. The myriads of which the class is composed have 
been startled from their propriety by discovering that the 
principle which was potent enough to overpower the jailer 
of old, and to compel him to cry aloud in anguish and 
uncertainty, should have lost none of its energy since, and 
that it operates on the human mind now after exactly the 
same fashion that it operated then. * An attenuated and 
shrivelled form of Christianity had become one of the 
decencies of society, and men took praise to themselves 
for treating it with good manners. Religion had sunk 
into a respectable mediocrity, and had become, therefore, a 
fit subject for being not only tolerated, but recommended, 
by the class who would have extended neither recommen- 
dation nor tolerance to its Author. We remarked on a 
former occasion that the natural principle of admiring or 
enduring only the mediocrity of virtue was exemplified on 
Calvary with a peculiar force and emphasis, of which the 
history of the universe can afford no other instance, by 
showing that it was as fatal to rise infinitely above as to 
sink greatly below the medium and average line. The 
world could tolerate neither our Saviour nor the two 
thieves, and it therefore crucified both him and them. 
And Christianity in Scotland no sooner begins to resemble 
its Master, than the men who tolerated, and even admired 
it in its state of tame and inefficient mediocrity, turn round 
to spit and revile, and, in short, to treat it exactly as they 
would have treated Him. We speak, of course, of only 
its more respectable enemies, the mediocritists, — the men 
who, though they would have crucified our Saviour, would 
have crucified the thieves also. We do not speak of the 
men who, like some of our contemporaries, would have 
accomplished only half the work, by suffering the malefac- 
tors to escape. • 

Among the more respectable class we rank a Liverpool 



CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 



281 



conservative journal, to which our attention has just been 
called, — a strenuous advocate of Protestantism in Ireland, 
and of Church extension on the Episcopalian basis. This 
paper collects its facts from the Aberdeen Herald, and 
decides unhesitatingly, on the evidence furnished, that the * 
" proceedings" at Rosskeen must have been at least " un- 
seemly, if not blasphemous;" and expresses a wish that 
the leaders in the Church should exert themselves " to 
prevent, or at least restrain, such outbreakings of ignorant 
fanaticism." Now, with the Aberdeen Herald we have no 
controversy. We believe the ingenious editor advocates 
the substitution of a knowledge qualification for the exist- 
ing property qualification, — unquestionably in the sincere 
and honest hope of furnishing the country with a more 
liberal and efficient constituency. We understand, too, 
that he excludes all religious knowledge from his scheme, 
in the natural and not very blamable fear of being 
himself deprived of the franchise through the exercise of 
his own test. Some of the remarks of the Liverpool con- 
servative, however, we shall take the liberty of examining : 

" We cherish the most sincere regard for the Church of Scotland, 
and wish to see her shine in the pure and chastening light of other 
and worthier days ; but it is impossible to witness such proceedings 
without experiencing feelings of the deepest regret and alarm. We 
should not perhaps have noticed this affair at Rosskeen at all, had 
we not been aware that any apology founded upon the obscurity of 
the place cannot be offered or pleaded by the Church ; for it is 
not many months since our attention was drawn to similar scenes in 
the vicinity of Glasgow, which several otherwise estimable clergy- 
men of the Establishment endeavored to justify. We allude to the 
fanatical follies perpetrated at Kilsyth, and defended by the Rev. 
Mr. Burns and other ministers, who ought to know better, and 
entertain more elevated views of religion." 

Now, this passage was written by a gentleman who pro- 
fesses to believe in the thirty-nine articles, who denounces 
the anti-scriptural policy of the present ministry, depre- 

24* 



282 



CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 



cates the spread of Popery, laments over the decline of 
Protestantism in Ireland, and advocates the extension of 
the English Church. It is fraught with instruction. It is 
because the conservatives who can think and write in this 
manner are so numerous that the party are so inefficient, 
and that they so utterly belie their name. Why is it that 
Protestantism in the Episcopalian Church of Ireland should 
have seen, during a century and a half, the Roman Catho- 
lic population of the country doubling and quadrupling 
around it, without any corresponding increase in the 
limited number of its own adherents, — that, in brief, on 
this unhappy arena practical error should have proved a 
stronger principle than ostensible and theoretic truth? 
Simply because the practical error had a principle of 
vitality in it, — that it was a vigorous and powerful super- 
stition, — and that the nominal faith opposed to it wanted 
life and vigor. Dead forms of truth cannot contend with 
living principles, be the principles as base or erroneous 
as they may. Living Socialism is an overmatch for dead 
Christianity. Now, one of the grand errors of what we 
have termed the mediocritists in religion — a class that 
still hold nineteen-twentieths of the patronages of the 
Church, and who have long overlaid its energies both in 
England and our own country — arises from their igno- 
rance of this important, though surely simple, fact. They 
established a dead Protestantism in Ireland, and yet cal- 
culated on its strength as living truth. They patronized 
an inefficient Moderatism in Scotland as a rational and 
modified form of Christianity, and held that, as it was in 
the main a very excellent and sensible thing, with no fanati- 
cism in it, the masses would straightway submit their pas- 
sions to its government. And now, a numerous body of 
the same class, though with, we trust, a mixture of good 
and wise men among them, are employed in extending their 
Church — trusting, doubtless, through a religion which es- 
chews revivals, to absorb dissent and annihilate Chartism. 
Would that they were more intimately acquainted with 



CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 



283 



the laws which regulate antagonist forces, and knew better 
how to calculate on their respective degrees of power! 
There is more strength in Chartism alone, weak and dis- 
reputable as it is, than in all the modified Christianity in 
England that scoffs at revivals. The man who writes as 
above of the work of revival in Ross-shire, — a work in 
which Episcopalians such as John Newton and Thomas 
Scott, or Archbishops Usher and Leighton, would have 
rejoiced to join, — can write as follows, and in the same 
column, of religious education: 

" The Church appears to have thrown off the lethargy which 
temporizing and undecided legislation had brought upon her, and to 
have set herself to work, as far at least as this extensive diocese is 
concerned, for the regeneration of our deluded population, in right 
good earnest. There can be no doubt whatever on the minds of 
any persons who have given attention to the subject, that the in- 
struction of the middle classes on religious principles has been lament- 
ably neglected, or that dissent and infidelity have labored to sow 
their tares in ground predisposed to receive and nurture their vicious 
qualities. To this, in a great measure, may be ascribed the preva- 
lence, in the present day, of Chartism, Socialism, Radicalism, and 
the other delusions of which the merely scientifically tutored is so 
frequently made the victim." 

There is a moral chemistry in the ecclesiastical questions 
agitated in Scotland in the present clay that is fast decom- 
posing the old elements of party. How completely, for 
instance, does our first extract rfeutralize the effect of the 
second. Dugald Dalgetty was of opinion that "Protes- 
tantism " was a very respectable watchword when pay was 
good and quarters comfortable ; but the confession betrayed 
the mercenary. Now, on a similar principle, the Conser- 
vative who wishes to render "religious education" an effec- 
tive watchword for political purposes in Scotland, should 
avoid sneering at religious revivals. We find our contem- 
porary mightily prefers the policy of Dr. Bryce in Church 
matters to the policy of Dr. Chalmers. His idea of religion 



284 



CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 



seems to be, that it is a principle at once very pliant and 
very powerful, — - a something for the Court of Session to 
control at will, but able to control everything else, however 
potent, — a moving power, that, like steam, can overthrow 
mountains, and yet be turned off by a stop-cock, — a Sam- 
son, feeble and irresistible by turns, that can be bound with 
green withes at one time, and set loose to rout an embattled 
host at another. A word in his ear. If the stop-cock be 
able to turn it off, the mountain will never be levelled by 
it. If the green withes bind it, the Philistines have noth- 
ing to fear from it. The religion represented by the 
Moderatism of Scotland is a principle which would yield 
readily to the Court of Session ; but there does not exist 
a single antagonist power to which it would not yield as 
readily. It is a principle destined, not to control, but to 
be controlled. 

We have often er than once expressed our thorough 
confidence in the work of revival in Ross-shire. We are 
acquainted with the ministers engaged in it, the style and 
manner of their preaching, and the doctrines which have, 
been rendered effectual in its production ; and we are 
assured a time is yet coming when many of its present 
enemies will be content to speak of it in a different tone. 
There is a numerous class who can more than tolerate 
religion in its reflection, though they may hate it heartily 
in its real presence, — who can admire it when it becomes 
the theme of poetry, or is embodied in a classic literature, 
but not before, — who deem family worship a very excel- 
lent thing in the stanzas of the "Cottar's Saturday Night," 
and Christianity a noble princi]3le in the pages of Cowper. 
Now, to such men religion appears good in its reflex influ- 
ences, though not in itself; and to such the scene of the 
revival will present appearances in the future more in 
accordance with their taste and fancy than those which it 
exhibits at present. The effects of a similar revival in the 
district, which took place in the early half of the last 
century, were felt in it for more than eighty years after. 



THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 



285 



There were few dwellings, however humble, in which, 
regularly as the day rose and set, family worship was not 
kept ; and in the course of an evening walk the voice of 
psalms might be heard from almost every hamlet. There 
was a higher tone of morals among the inhabitants than 
in many localities at least as generally favored; more 
content, too, with not less privation ; — no Chartism, no 
Socialism, no infidelity. The people, in short, were what 
the statesmen termed a " well-conditioned people." Effects 
such as these should render even the utilitarian tolerant 
of revivals; and why not also the litterateur? They have 
to wait only a very little. 



THE OUTEAGE AT MARNOCH. 

The instalment of Mr. Edwards in the temporalities of 
Marnoch took place on Thursday last, and proved the 
occasion of a scene without precedent in the history of 
the Church of Scotland. On many former occasions have 
the forms of religion been prostituted to serve very vile 
purposes. On many occasions has the disguise of profes- 
sion proved all too flimsy to cover the meanness of the 
objects which it has been assumed to conceal. But on no 
former occasion has the prostitution been equally public, 
or the utter inadequacy of the disguise rendered palpable 
in the same degree to a circle equally extensive. To the 
profanation at Marnoch the eyes of an entire community 
have been directed, and the consequences which it involves 
affect the religious interests of a whole kingdom. 

A heavy snow-storm had burst out on the preceding 
Wednesday ; and on the morning of Thursday the country 
round Marnoch was deeply enveloped in snow. Huge 
wreaths of drift had choked up every road and pathway, 
and the stream which sweeps past the manse and church- 
yard was toiling, brown and swollen, through the half- 



286 



THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 



melted accumulations that in some places arched it over 
from bank to bank, and in others had sunk undermined 
into the torrent. It was no day for journeying pleasantly, 
or even safely ; but the interest of the people of the neigh- 
boring parishes had been deeply excited in behalf of their 
poor neighbors, and hundreds might be seen wending 
over the heights in all directions in lines of six or eight, — 
some robust man in each party breaking a way through 
the snow for the rest. Before eleven o'clock a crowd had 
gathered round the church, sufficient almost to have tilled 
it twice over. There were individuals present from Keith, 
from Pluntly, from Banff, from Portsoy ; — all the parishes 
for miles round had sent out their spectators ; and, assur- 
edly, the spectacle which on that occasion they witnessed 
will never be effaced from their memories. Mr. Edwards 
and his friends arrived before noon ; and, after commencing 
the business of the day, with singular appropriateness, by 
breaking into the manse through a window, they moved 
on to the church. In a few seconds the building was 
crowded almost to suffocation. The parishioners ranged 
themselves in the body of the edifice; the strangers occu- 
pied the galleries, and clustered in dense masses outside 
the windows and doors; a few Edinburgh lawyers were 
seated in a pew in the centre; and — curiously enough — 
the reporter of an Intrusion newspaper in the pulpit. One 
of the suspended clergymen opened the proceedings by 
prayer; and the words took the form of an address to 
Deity, but they were listened to merely as the necessary 
adjuncts of an act of outrageous injustice and oppression ; 
and yet, strange as it may seem, the attention of the audi- 
ence proved all the more deep in consequence of the 
estimate. Every phrase employed seemed to gather new 
meaning from its utter inappropriateness ; and, impressed 
through the force of contrast, the dead commonplaces of a 
lifeless devotion seemed starting into frightful activity 
through the influence of a spirit of possession. When the 
form was over, and the gentleman had sat down, an elder 



THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 



287 



of the parish rose, and demanded of him, for himself and 
his fellow-parishioners, by what authority he and his breth- 
ren had met there. Mark the reply! "By the authority," 
he said, "of the National Church, and in the name of the 
Lord Jesus Christ ! " A shudder ran through the meeting. 
It was again demanded of the suspended clergymen, on 
the part of the people, in whose name, and in what ca- 
pacity, they had met there ; and the gentleman .who had 
opened by prayer reiterated his assertion, and with similar 
effect as before. It was demanded of them whether their 
appearance was sanctioned by the authority of the General 
Assembly, or made in direct opposition to that authority ; 
and the question met with no reply. The people declined 
to sist themselves at the bar of what they could not regard 
as a court either civil or ecclesiastical, and read, by their 
agent, a solemn protest to that effect, in which, deprecating 
the great wickedness and tyranny about to be inflicted 
upon them, and the gross mockery of justice and desecra- 
tion of religion which its forms involved, they stated that, 
before a competent and lawful presbytery, they were pre- 
pared to prove objections to the life, qualifications, and 
doctrine of the obnoxious presentee, sufficient not only to 
preclude his admission into the Church, but even to justify 
his deposition if previously admitted. But what weight 
could be allowed to statements such as these by men whose 
very appearance in that place was a trespass? The protest 
was read ; and the people, gathering up their Bibles from 
the pews, rose in a body, and quitted the church. There 
were old gray-headed men among them, who had wor- 
shipped within its walls for more than half a century, 
men, too, in the vigorous prime of manhood, — others just 
entering on the stage of active life. All rose, and all went 
away, — many of them in tears. It was the church in 
which, Sabbath after Sabbath, their fathers had met to 
worship ; it had formed the centre of many a solemn 
association, many a sacred attraction ; and they were now 
quitting it forever. Even the " buyers and sellers in the 



288 



THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 



house of God" — the men to whom persecution is business 
— seemed awed and impressed for the time. "Will they 
all go ? " they were heard to whisper. Yes, all went ; the 
pews were emptied from gable to gable. The sacred and 
the civil may be mixed up and confounded in idea by f 
courts and individuals ; but it has been ordained by God 
himself that their natures should keep them apart. ~No 
secular power on earth can impose a minister on a people. 
The control of judges and magistrates affect, as in this 
remarkable case, the temporalities only. The experiment 
has been tried ; and our readers may see the case of con- 
flicting jurisdictions virtually decided by the extent and 
degree to which the Court of Session can give a clergyman 
to the parishioners of Marnoch. And it is well to remem- 
ber that to secure a result so disastrous — to verify the 
same ruinous experiment on an immensely larger scale — 
has the Earl of Aberdeen been struggling to legislate for 
the people of Scotland. 

The parishioners, after quitting the church, held a brief 
but impressive meeting in a hollow at the foot of the hill 
on which the edifice has been erected. The day was still 
dreary, and the snow lay thick and white around them. 
And in that snowy hollow, oppressed by a sense of the 
grievous outrage to which they had been subjected, but 
more in grief than in anger, they expressed their settled 
determination never, by word or act, to recognize as their 
minister the man to whom the patrimony of their church 
had been adjudged, and to adhere to one another in all 
their future efforts for obtaining redress of the wrong; and 
then, separating in silence, they returned by different routes 
to their respective homes. The church meanwhile had 
become a scene of tumult and confusion. The strangers 
outside had rushed into the body of the building when the 
parishioners had quitted it, and had begun to express their 
sense of the sacredness of the service by shouts and hisses, 
and the flinging of missiles. Assuredly the secular party 
may read their future fortunes in the incident, should the 



THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 



289 



same wretched success attend them in the present struggle 
on a large scale that has attended them in the parish of 
Marnoch. Miserable, in such an event, would their fate 
prove : the surges of popular indignation would rise and 
overwhelm them ; and who, among the millions of the em- 
pire, would raise an arm in their defence? A magistrate 
entered the church in the midst of the tumult, — a man 
much respected in the district, — and succeeded in restoring 
order. He had no sympathy with the representatives of 
the civil court in the profanation in which they were en- 
gaged. No one could be more hostile to the settlement of 
Edwards ; and hence, in no small degree, through his influ- 
ence with the people on that account, his ability of protect- 
ing the miserable objects of their hatred and contempt.^ 
An incident at this stage brought out very strikingly how 
entirely the parishioners had left the church. An individ- 
ual present complained to the magistrate, who is himself a 
parishioner, that the Marnoch people had taken as active a 
part in the riot as any of the rest. He was asked, in turn, 
where these Marnoch people were, and succeeded in point- 
ing out a young man in one of the galleries, — the only 
parishioner present, — who stated, when questioned, that he 
had taken no part whatever in the disturbance, and was 
only there because he could not get out through the crowd. 
There was a passage immediately cleared for him ; and 
thus, ere the actual work of intrusion began, the last parish- 
ioner present was enabled to leave the church. 

In these circumstances the ordination proceeded. The 
bellman of a neighboring parish officiated as precentor; 
there were prayers repeated, in which God was named, 
that the stipend of Marnoch might be appropriated to the 
support of Edwards ; and the preacher argued, in his dis- 
course, that the men through whose agency he was thrust 
upon the people should be accounted ministers of Christ! 
Never, surely, on any former occasion, did arguments tell 
with more wretched effect. Ministers of Christ ! It was 
unnecessary to ask from whom they had derived their 

25 



290 



THE OUTRAGE AT MAENOCH. 



authority; the business of the day read a too unequivocal 
comment on the question, and answered it too surely. Mr. 
Edwards stood up in that crowded assembly. He declared, 
with all the solemnity of an oath, that he would subject 
himself to the superior judicatories of the Church, and 
seek earnestly to maintain her unity and peace, whatsoever 
troubles or persecutions might arise. He affirmed, in the 
hearing of all, that zeal for the honor of God, love to Jesus 
Christ, and desire of saving souls, had been his great 
motives and chief inducements to enter into the functions 
of the holy ministry, and not worldly designs or interests 
of any kind. He asserted that he had used no undue meth- 
ods, either of himself or through others, in procuring his 
call to the parish. What call? He promised, too, that, 
through Divine grace, he would perform among the people 
all the duties of a faithful minister of the gospel. Every 
eye was turned upon him, and there was no longer any dis- 
position evinced to hiss or hoot. Even the more volatile 
portion of the audience were tamed into sobriety and seri- 
ousness for the time. A deep shudder again ran through the 
assembly. The mummery proceeded. There were hands 
laid upon his head ; and he became a minister of Christ in 
the sense understood by the men through whom his voca- 
tion was conferred. It is customary for an acceptable min- 
ister on such occasions to receive the hearty welcome of 
his people at one of the doors of the church. But no such 
welcome awaited on Mr. Edwards. Mr. Peterkin, of Edin- 
burgh, the legal agent of the suspended clergy, wished him 
much joy ; Mr. Robertson, of the Aberdeen Constitutional, 
and Mr. Adam, of the Aberdeen Herald, shook hands with 
him as they hurried past to assert the popularity of Intru- 
sion ; a captain of police in attendance took his arm to 
escort him through the crowd; and, as he turned his back 
on the desecrated edifice, the assembled hundreds hissed 
him from the door. And such are the more striking partic- 
ulars of an event destined to occupy a prominent place in 
the history of the Church of Scotland. 



THE OUTRAGE AT MAEXOCH. 



291 



It is unnecessary to offer a single remark on the subject. 
The lessons which it inculcates almost everyone may read. 
Religion is the business of time for eternity ; and without 
an all-pervading conviction of its importance, and a deep- 
seated belief in the reality of its objects, life passes un- 
blessed by its influences, and death comes uncheered by its 
hopes. It comprises the arts of living well and of dying 
safely; and it lives and breathes in an element of faith. 
But not only must there be an all-pervading belief in its 
objects, but also in the honesty, sincerity, spirituality of its 
messengers. They must be regarded as sent ; and it is with 
this vital element of belief that the civil or the secular 
cannot interfere. Where is there a power on earth that 
can inspire the people of Mavnoeh with confidence in the 
character of the man who must henceforth walk in shame 
and dishonor among them, and bear, as if in scorn, the 
name of their pastor ? Through what form or process are 
the dying to be led to long for his presence at their bed- 
sides, or to wish for an interest in his prayers ? Through 
what influences are men awakened to anxiety for their 
spiritual state to be brought to ask counsel or guidance of 
him ? Can the civil court stretch out its arm in the mat- 
ter, and be as God between this man and the people ? It 
has already done its utmost, and the deplorable scene of 
Thursday last has been the result. The country, we reit- 
erate, may see in the case of Marnoch the true power of 
the Court of Session in the spiritual field. It may see, 
besides, the fate which awaits the Christian people and the 
Xational Church, if the secular element prevail in this 
eventful and surely most important struggle. 



292 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES OF THE 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES OE THE SETTLEMENT AT 
MARNOCH. 



Chesterfield has exemplified his ideas of indecency 
somewhat whimsically, by remarking that, though there 
may be nothing improper in dancing in a ball-room, it 
would be decidedly indecent to dance at church. He was 
in the right at least in referring to the church for the illus- 
tration. What would pass without remark in a place less 
solemn becomes coarse and indecent there. What would 
be simply business in a lawyer's office strikes as a gross 
impertinence in the house of prayer ; and an air which 
might grace the jockeyism of Newmarket, would shock, 
when exhibited in the pulpit or the elder's pew, as impious 
and profane. The appearance of some of the suspended 
clergymen on the morning of the settlement seems to have 
happily exemplified the remark of Chesterfield. None of 
our readers can have forgotten the striking picture drawn 
by Chalmers of the " coarse and contemptuous clergymen, 
booted and spurred for riding commissions," who assisted 
in perpetrating the forced settlements of the last century, 
— men now gone down to dishonored graves, whose mem- 
ories rot unburied in the recollection of the country, and 
whom even their successors in principle and policy deem 
it prudent to denounce and disown. Archbishop Beaton 
in his steel harness was comparatively respectable : he was 
a bold, though not an honest man. The booted and 
spurred clergymen drawn by Chalmers were as despicable 
as they were wicked. Now, it is curious to observe how 
closely the perpetrators of the forced settlement at Mar- 
noch resembled, in externals at least, the abettors of forced 
settlements in the last age. They entered the church 
apparently in high spirits, — one dangling a thick, short 
riding-whip, another sporting a stout stick, excellently fit- 
ted for a market brawl. All had the air of men wonder- 



SETTLEMENT AT MARNOCH. 



293 



fully well pleased, and quite aware that they were on the 
eve of doing something clever. WhijDs and sticks were 
laid on the pew before them, intermixed in grotesque con- 
fusion with sparsely written documents tied up in tape — 
decisions of court and opinions of counsel. Bibles some- 
how they seemed to have forgotten, or, perhaps, rather left 
designedly behind them, as mere bundles of ex parte docu- 
ments on the other side. And there they sat, all looking 
smart, and waiting very knowingly till the people should 
sist themselves at their bar. Among them was Mr. Ed- 
wards, encircled by gentlemen of the law w T ho hold by the 
theology of the Court of Session, and kindly regarded, 
too, by gentlemen of the press chiefly remarkable for 
holding by no theology at all. Like the young man sent by 
the sons of Eli with a flesh-fork to desecrate the sacrifice 
of the people, and to make men " abhor the offering of the 
Lord," he had come to take by force what without force the 
people would never have yielded him. The business of the 
inorning went on. During the reading of the solemn and 
well-judged protest of the congregation, there were nods, 
and winks, and half-suppressed chuckles, among the party. 
The joke was by no means apparent. A man thoroughly 
convinced that the hundreds around him had all been born 
to immortality, and had all souls to be lost or saved, could 
hardly afford being merry on any such occasion ; but it 
was certainly no conviction of the importance of man's 
destiny that had brought the party there. As for the 
joke, all our readers know that to occupy the chair of the 
scorner requires neither the perception of wit nor the 
peculiar inventive power in which wit originates. Men of 
wonderfully little sense or humor can sneer and make 
merry at whatever involves eternal interests, or concerns 
the cause of God. 

Their merriment, however, received a check. A man 
may repeat a lie, it has been said, until at last he actually 
brings himself to believe it. Now, among the Intrusion- 
ists present there were not a few who had done more in 



294 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES . OF THE 



the cause than barely work for their fee by drawing up 
papers and making speeches, — men who had busied them- 
selves, into the bargain, in asserting in newspapers and 
magazines the popularity of their principles, and that the 
movement in the country was confined almost exclusively 
to a few clerical agitators. When, however, the people 
rose and left the church in a body, they were undeceived, 
and looked somewhat crest-fallen. Mr. Peterkin found 
that the author who writes Columns for the Kirk in the 
Observer had deceived him. Another legal gentleman 
present began to discover that he had been not a little 
misled by the statements in "Blackwood." The people 
are of some importance, after all ; and we question whether 
a thousand Court-of-Session Mr. Edwardses, in the thou- 
sand manses of Scotland, would compose a Church that 
would come quite up to the idea of even the Lord President, 
or whether he would deem the body and members in such 
a case more than worthy of their secular and only head. 
The people all went away : the Intrusionists remained 
behind, chop-fallen and blank. The fate of the Earl of 
Aberdeen's intended measure was sealed by that act. His 
lordship has read it aright. It has taught him that there 
are things which lie beyond the reach of diplomacy; that 
he has misrepresented and calumniated the best and most 
revered men of his country to little purpose ; and that it 
is one thino- to lend a diminished and still sinking influence 
to the party under whose sway religion has ever sickened 
and pined away, and quite another to legislate for the peo- 
ple of Scotland. The tumult began, and the fears of the 
Intrusionists seem to have been very marked and very 
edifying. The disturbers are represented as merely a few 
thoughtless lads in the gallery, who took, unwarrantably 
enough, to the flinging of snow-pellets and the making of 
noises. Men of fortitude have borne as much without 
wincing; and the men of the court had brought both 
whips and sticks with them, on the principle, apparently, 
that made the Copper Captain gird himself with a long 



SETTLEMENT AT MARNOC'H. 



295 



sword ; but, too meek to "fight, and not quite prepared for 
martyrdom, they sat cowering and shivering in the pew, 
staring at one another with pale and piteous faces, miser- 
ably afraid to remain where they were, but by far too 
frightened to rise and go away. The missiles flew thick 
and fast. The editor of- the Constitutional seems to have 
taken a snowball, in his imminent terror, for a piece of 
flying seat; and a bit of a wandering cigar, which, if it 
came lighted, must have very much resembled a bomb- 
shell, seems to have struck utter astonishment to the inmost 
soul of the editor of the Herald. Both gentlemen, with 
the rest of the party, doubtless wished themselves at home. 
The noises continued, enlivened by an occasional snow- 
ball; business stuck fast, — so did the Intrusionists ; and, 
as the afternoon began to close in, a shade of deeper anxi- 
ety and terror lengthened their faces, as they surmised 
the possibility of being left in the dark to the tender mer- 
cies of the urchins in the gallery. We are no advocates 
of violence or outrage ; but Ave justify neither when we 
remark, that the party may estimate the weight of their 
religious character, and the degree of moral force which 
they possess, from this event. They but experienced the 
reflex influence of their own character coming back to 
them from the people. > Our former remarks on this part 
of the subject have, we are happy to find, given great 
offence to the Aberdeen Herald, which has produced an 
article on the subject, chiefly remarkable — and we are 
serious when we say so — for the editor thanking God. 
Johnson expressed his pleasure on one occasion that his 
publisher should have grace enough to thank God for any- 
thing. We are far from sure in this case, however, that 
the unhappy northern editor, instead of breathing a prayer, 
is not mouthing an oath. 

To proceed. Hope was well-nigh gone from the party, 
when a magistrate and an officer of police appeared. The 
snowballs and the noises ceased. Mr. Walker, of Huntly, 
who had borne up wonderfully in the time of terror, grew 



296 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES OF THE 



nervous at the sudden reverse ; and forgetting, in his con- 
fusion of idea, that he was the Court of Session's minister, 
began to issue orders to the magistrate, instead of waiting 
to receive orders from him. His advisers, however, soon 
set him right. The magistrate, well knowing his place 
and his new powers, dictated to the officiating clergyman 
the length of his sermon ; and he also, knowing his place, 
made it as short as he was bidden. There were some very 
remarkable passages in the discourse. It was seriously 
stated by the clergyman that the obnoxious presentee had 
" long set his heart on becoming minister of the parish ; 
that the firmness with which he had pursued his object 
plainly showed him to be a man who could be daunted by 
no common difficulties, or turned aside by no considera- 
tions of labor or anxiety;" and that the "same firmness, 
perseverance, and zeal," which in this instance had ren- 
dered his aim successful, would now be directed in fur- 
thering, through extraordinary exertion, the spiritual inter- 
ests of the people. It must be confessed the argument is 
singularly wide in its scope. If there be aught of solidity 
in it, then has the Church most to hope from her bitterest, 
"keenest, most inveterate enemies. What may not Chris- 
tianity owe to the activity of Robert Owen, or the zeal of 
the Jesuits? There must have, been much of good to 
expect, on this principle, from the infidelity which in 
Paine, Hume, and Voltaire, so powerfully assailed religion 
with the pen. There must have been as much to expect 
from the Bonners, Beatons, Claverhouses, that pursued her 
with fire and the sword. Nay, if we are to ground our 
hopes exclusively on qualities such as firmness, persever- 
ance, activity, and zeal, without taking into account the 
objects which they are exerted to secure, where shall we 
find created being more hopeful than that terrible Spirit 
of untiring energy, who, devoid of hope, defeated, miser- 
able, and open to the eye of Omnipotence, never once 
slacks in his zeal or relinquishes his purpose ? Another 
passage of the gentleman's discourse was more striking 



SETTLEMENT AT MARNOCH. 



29? 



still. He alluded to the guilt of pastors who warn not the 
people. " The minister," he said, " who neglecteth to do 
this is not the people's pastor, but a hireling, who careih 
not for the flock, but for the wages, — who scatters the 
flock, and drives them aicay from the fold; and great is 
his guilt, and great will be his condemnation. He is an 
unjust steward; and woe will be to such a pastor." What 
wonder that the audience should have shuddered to hear 
truths so solemn delivered in circumstances that read upon 
them so striking a comment ! The preacher finished his 
discourse ; and, coming down from the pulpit, heard Mr. 
Edwards take upon him vows of equal solemnity, and then 
constituted him minister to Peter Taylor of Foggie-loan. 

The parish of Marnoch is one of the most populous 
country parishes in the north of Scotland. The parish- 
ioners are a sober and industrious race of people, who have 
hitherto led quiet and peaceable lives, undisturbed by 
political agitation. But they are far from being an igno- 
rant or unintelligent race. They partake largely, on the 
contrary, in the characteristic shrewdness of their better 
countrymen, and share deeply in the old Scottish predilec- 
tion for theological study. Of one theological work no 
fewer than sixty copies have been sold in the parish ; a 
Sabbath-school library, lately established among them, 
already contains two hundred and fifty volumes ; and so 
deeply are they interested in the cause of the Church, that 
petitions in her behalf, asserting her spiritual independence, 
have received five hundred signatures among them in the 
course of a single day. There are men in the parish who 
have missed scarce a meeting of presbytery or synod since 
the proceedings which have obtruded Edwards upon them 
began, — one tradesman, in particular, whose interest in 
the case had led him to travel, mostly on foot, from church 
court to church court, not less than a thousand miles. 
And these people, under the reign of Moderatism, would 
have been lost to the Church. But we live in a better 
time. The guilt and folly of forced settlements attach no 



298 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



longer to our ecclesiastical courts. The minion of the 
Court of Session may fatten on the temporalities of Mar- 
noch, but he forms no part of the Church of Scotland. It 
is he, not the people, who is severed from her communion. 



SKETCHES OE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 

PART FIRST. OPENING OP THE ASSEMBLY. 

The General Assembly of the Church commenced its 
sittings on Thursday last. Perhaps on no former occasion 
was the preliminary pageant marked by a degree of splen- 
dor equally great. Royalty put on all its robes in the 
person of its representative, and summoned together all 
its attendants. The civic magistrate was there with his 
mace, the soldier with his sword ; there was much show 
and glitter, — pages, and lackeys, and guards, and along 
line of coaches, — antique insignia, that the same mental 
faculty to which we owe the metaphor and the allegory 
had devised ages ago, to symbolize the functions and 
authority of office ; robes and liveries of uncouth splendor, 
— heirlooms of the same early period, and whose fantastic 
gayety, like the richly-tinted lichens of some ancient 
obelisk or mighty oak, seemed indicative of the vast an- 
tiquity of the institutions to which they had so long been 
attached ; above all, immense multitudes of spectators 
thronging the streets far as the eye could reach, and which, 
forming of themselves by far the most imposing part of 
, the spectacle, served also to show that the love of such 
pageantries lies all too firmly imbedded in man's nature for 
the utilitarian or the economist to dislodge or eradicate. 
Such were the components of the pageant; and the nat- 
ural effect of the whole was to lead men's minds into the 
past. It was scarce possible to cast the eye along the 
glittering lines of bayonets stretching away in long per- 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 299 



spective, or to mark the flashing sabres of the dragoons, 
without calling to recollection that both had been far 
differently employed for more than a century, and that 
Presbyterianism is now the established religion of Scot- 
land, not because the state preferred it, but because, in 
opposition to kings and courts, backed by the civil magis- 
trate and the military, the people preferred it, and held by 
it in distress and persecution, until at length, in the good 
providence of God, the oppressors were removed from 
their high places, to wear out life in beggary and exile, 
and what was so emphatically the national religion became 
perforce the recognized religion of the state. The mind 
wandered from the pageant of Thursday, with all its liveried 
pomp and solemn glitter, to a scene of lonely heaths, where, 
amid the graves of their slaughtered kindred, a persecuted 
people worshipped God agreeably to the dictates of con- 
science enlightened by his word, and where the mountain 
echoes, ever and anon awakened by shouts of mingled 
rage and exultation, or the patter of the deadly musket, 
told too surely that the murderous men-hunters were 
abroad. 

The tone of the Assembly, as indicated by its first meet- 
ing, gave evidence that the privileges purchased at so 
mighty a cost by the ancestors will not readily be relin- 
quished by their descendants. It is difficult to catch the 
traits of expression — if we may so speak — of a great 
assemblage animated by some powerful feeling. The pre- 
liminary pageant outside, like the fringe or the foldings of 
a robe, presented a comparatively easy subject for the 
pencil; one could have cut a model of it out of tin or 
pasteboard. The expression of the meeting within — 
resembling rather the features animated by the mind — 
can be less adequately described. Nothing, however, could 
be more obvious than what the expression conveyed. It 
bore, in all its traits, the stamp of earnestness and deep 
interest. The densely occupied galleries, with their " over- 
bellying crowds," and where scarce an additional spectator 



300 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



could have found standing-room; the fixity of posture, 
with the general movement at every pause, both so indica- 
tive of fixity of attention; the universal "hush, hush," 
when the slightest noise in some over-crowded corner 
threatened to rob the audience of but a fragment of the 
debate ; the oneness of direction in every face ; the 
forward attitude ; the hand raised to the ear, — all served 
to show how thoroughly men are beginning to appreciate 
the importance of our great ecclesiastical struggle. The 
well-filled area, too, thronged at so early a stage by well- 
nigh all the members of Assembly ; the jealous and 
watchful care evinced at every step of the proceedings, 
lest a single hair's breadth should be inadvertently yielded 
up; the uncompromising character of the majority, grow- 
ing in numbers and stern resolution as the opposition in 
high places thickens and darkens over them; the excite- 
ment, increasing as the debate proceeds, until at length the 
interest grows all too painful, and the hour of dismissal 
comes as a felt relief to even the most eager, — such were 
some of the more strongly- marked circumstances indicative 
of the temper of the Assembly, and by far too prominent 
to escape the notice of even the least observant. It is a 
significant fact that, in its first vote, — a vote involving 
the main principles of the contest in their most prac- 
tical form, — the Assembly should have declared its de- 
termined adherence to its principles by a majority of two 
hundred and fifteen to a minority of eighty-five ; for such, 
in the division pressed on Thursday, has been the over- 
powering majority against the motion of Dr. Cook that 
the commissions from what he termed the minority of 
the Presbytery of Strathbogie should not be received. 
We may remark in the passing that the negative character 
of his motion — the unwillingness it implied of presenting 
in a positive form the claims of the deposed — is not 
without its meaning. When the wild beast droops the 
eye it meditates a retreat ; and there is evidently a 
drooping of the eye here. The intense interest felt in the 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 301 

proceedings of this Assembly — an interest which, for the 
present at least, seems to swallow up the consideration of 
all other concerns — bears reference, doubtless, to the 
important struggle in which the Church is engaged, and 
on the issue of which so much depends ; but we cannot 
avoid the conclusion that there is another important cause 
in operation. The skeleton Assemblies of half a century 
ago- — Assemblies composed of mere handfuls of members, 
and which but half excited the half-fledged curiosity of a 
few listless idlers, who came to yawn in the galleries, or 
to mark peculiarities of elocution or diversities of style — 
owed their unpopularity, not exclusively to the essentially 
unpopular character of Moderatism, but also to the skepti- 
cism of the age. A wide-spread indifferency affected all 
the churches of Europe. The desires and wishes of men 
restricted to the present scene of things expatiated so ex- 
clusively in the political field, — a miserable Eden, surely, 
possessed of no tree of life, and into which death and sin 
had entered, — that they sought none other; and, save to 
a chosen few, those hopes which, founding on the immor- 
tality of the soul and the revealed will of Grod, look far 
into the future, seemed mere hallucinations of a past state 
of things, whose unsolid character the intelligence of a 
practical age had at length succeeded in demonstrating. 
The case seems different now. The reaction in favor of 
belief has begun powerfully to operate in both false and 
true churches. Popery is evidently rising. Protestantism 
seems fast quitting the neutral ground it had so long 
occupied, by two opposite outlets, and aggregating its 
divided forces on opposite sides, — here advancing towards 
its original type, there precipitating itself full on Rome. 
The felt reference to the spiritual nature and future state 
of man exerts, as of old, its influence on human affairs. 
Ecclesiastical questions promise to be no longer subordi- 
nate to merely political ones ; and the General Assembly 
of the Church of Scotland is felt, in consequence of this 
change, even by worldly men, to represent one of the 

26 



302 SKETCHES OE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



greatest interests of the kingdom. It is only fifteen years 
since Canning, in his place in Parliament, predicted that 
the first war in Europe would be a war of opinion. It 
was of political opinion he spoke. He had watched the 
accumulation, and marked the evident direction, of that 
power which has since produced the revolutions of France 
and Belgium, and extended the franchise over Britain and 
Ireland. But the present is, above all others, a time of 
sudden change. The tide whose rise he marked has since 
fallen, leaving no inconsiderable mass of impurity and 
corruption behind it; and the current is now setting in 
full in an opposite direction. The political war is past, 
and the next great conflict of the world will be in all 
probability a conflict, not of secular, but of religious 
opinion. 

It would be well to be prepared for it. There is no class 
of arguments which worldly men set aside with a feeling so 
ineffably contemptuous as the class derived from prophecy. 
There has been, no doubt, abuse in this province, as in all 
others ; but it is the only province in which the sober and 
proper use has been denied in consequence. We shall ven- 
ture to refer to it, notwithstanding the virtual prohibition. 
Many of our more judicious interpreters of prophecy are 
much in error if the Church be not entering, in the present 
time, on a period of protracted conflict, in which, though 
she may have to long often and vehemently for peace as a 
blessing, she shall have to contend for the right as a duty; 
nay, to struggle, perchance, for very existence. If such 
is to be the event, it would be surely well for "him that 
believeth not to make haste." If there is to be no " dis- 
charge in this war," let us look well to the posts in which 
the providence of God has placed us, and exert ourselves, 
in his strength, that they be maintained. Let us not desert 
them. Better to be in his battle than in quiet elsewhere. 
The evening will at length come, and we shall lay us down 
and be at rest. It is scarce possible to take a cool survey 
of the various stages of the present conflict, without being 



SKETCHES OE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 303 



struck by a remarkable peculiarity in its character. Cow- 
ley, in one of his graver pindarics, — "The Ode to Destiny," 
— describes a game of chess, in which the various figures 
seem to move of themselves along the board, with appar- 
ently no hand to guide them. He sees skilful and unlucky 
moves. A pawn rises to the top, and "becomes another 
thing and name.*' A knight, "that does bold wonders in 
the fray," amazes him with its success. He approves the 
gaining, censures the losing party, — admires their better 
moves, condemns the false and unfortunate ones. But the 
moves are not theirs. He raises his eyes from the board, 
and sees two shadowy figures bending over it, and propell- 
ing the pieces along the squares. And such, he exclaims, 
is the game of life. 

" "With man, alas! no otherwise it proves, — 
An unseen hand makes all the moves : 
And some are great, and some are small. 
Some climb to good, some from good fortune fall; 
Some wise men, and some fools, we call. — 
Figures, alas! of speech, for Destiny plays us all." 

Destiny is not the word : the Scriptures, and, from these, 
the Confessions and Catechisms of our Church, furnish us 
with a better. With this emendation, however, we have 
been often reminded of Cowley's seemingly extravagant 
fiction, during the course of the present controversy. "An 
unseen hand makes all the moves." The game has got 
very palpably beyond human management. But the event 
is in the hands of God. We cannot see it; we cannot see 
even the nearer moves ; Ave can see only our duty. We 
can but see that in this quarrel we must assert the Head- 
ship of Christ and the rights of his people. And certainly, 
though the shore be dim and distant, the compass is true. 



304 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



PART SECOND. THE MODERATES. 

We attempted in our last a brief — we are afraid rather 
inadequate — description of the opening ceremonies of the 
General Assembly, and the aspect of its first meeting. 
There are few things more tiresome than a speech from 
some nameless member at the close of a long debate, in 
which the superior men of the meeting or Assembly hare 
already taken part, and of which the important and leading 
points have been fairly exhausted. And as articles on the 
merits of the questions discussed might seem, in connec- 
tion with the very ample report given in our paper, but 
mere supernumerary speeches, — speeches of the kind 
which exercise, not the judgment, but the patience, and 
make men clamorous for the vote without in the least 
affecting it, — we shall rather attempt conveying to our 
readers some idea of the appearance of the Assembly, and 
of its leading men, than venture to solicit their atten- 
tion to the subjects with which the Assembly has had to 
deal. It is not in the nature of the mind to be contented 
with the mere names of men, or the mere dry details of 
events. The imagination, even where least active, is ever 
engaged in drawing scenes and portraits ; and hence the 
widely-spread popularity of that style of composition in 
which Bunyan and Scott were such masters, — the style in 
which narrative, reflection, and dialogue are blent, and 
relieved by description. It is, of all other styles, the best 
suited to satisfy, if we may so express ourselves, the crav- 
ings of the entire mind. 

We stand fronting the Lord High Commissioner, a 
robust, handsome man of forty-nine, in a military uniform, 
and see the moderator seated immediately below, and the 
table of the House in front laden with books and papers. 
There are one or two men in lawyers' gowns beside it, 
with large bunches of gray horse-hair on the outsides of 
their head, and high notions of the Court of Session 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OE 1841. 305 



within. In the cases in which the countenance is smooth 
and youthful, there is to an unaccustomed eye something 
singularly ludicrous in a disguise so uncouth. It must, no 
doubt, have been deemed impressive some two or three 
centuries ago ; but few in the present day will maintain 
that the horse's hair might not have been left in the 
horse's tail, and yet the learned gentlemen have looked 
none the less wise. A few leading men surround the 
table. The antagonist parties are ranged fronting each 
other, on the seats that rise on the opposite sides, or 
mingle together on those in front. Mark how very thin 
the ranks of Moderatism have become. They occupy 
merely a few of the nearer seats, forming, as it were, but 
a front lining to the wide vacuity behind. The party seems 
melting away, like icebergs in summer. There is, on the 
contrary, a dense, compact square on the opposite side, 
that stretches far under the gallery, and which is visibly 
adding to its numbers year after year. We restrict our 
sketches at present to the decaying party. Whatever else 
may be affirmed regarding them, it cannot be denied that 
they wear in general a very comfortable air. If it be per- 
secution that is thinning their numbers, it must be of a 
kind under which the individual thrives, though the cor- 
poration perishes. In nine cases out of ten, they are, in 
the language of Wordsworth, " rosy men, right fair to see." 

Observe, first, that elderly man seated at the foot of the 
table. The face, a strongly-marked one, seems indicative 
of shrewdness and self-possession. The features are some- 
what of the Roman cast, except that the nose droops more 
over the upper lip than in the Roman type, and the cheeks 
are more pendulous and square, rather militating in their 
expression — which seems to speak of the languor and 
relaxation of advanced life — against the general *cast of 
the countenance. The forehead is well and equally devel- 
oped, but by no means very striking. The same remark 
applies to the coronal region, which is bald. There is no 
surplus amount of sentiment, if phrenology speak true, and 

26* 



306 SKETCHES OE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



certainly no marked defect. The head is rather a large one, 
but by no means of the largest calibre. He is rising to speak, 
and the general hush shows that the Assembly deem him 
a man deserving of being attentively listened to. Mark 
his figure : it is compact, well built, and of the middle size. 
Age has in no degree exaggerated the rather handsome 
outline ; but we may discover its effects on the figure not- 
withstanding. He stands with equal weight on both legs, 
and the effect is that appearance of stiffness incident to 
advanced years, which painters remark as inevitable to the 
attitude. When standing, too, he uses a slender staff. 
There is nothing particularly emphatic in his mode of 
speaking. Nature never intended that he should be a 
great orator; the necessary depth of feeling and vigor 
of imagination were denied, and he seems to have known 
it ; but shrewdness, self-possession, and good sense were 
given ; and, availing himself of these to the full extent, he 
has rendered himself eminently skilful as a debater. He 
is thoroughly a man of business. Some of our readers 
must have already recognized in our description Dr. 
George Cook, ostensibly, if not in reality, the leader of 
the Moderate party, and unquestionably one of their 
ablest men. 

The reputation of Dr. Cook is a mere shadow beyond 
the precincts of our ecclesiastical courts. So far from 
being a European reputation, it is not even a British one. 
He is the author of a very sensible History of the Scottish 
Church, which people do not read in Scotland, and which 
is not known elsewhere; and of a very respectable biogra- 
phy of Principal Hill, which gathers dust undisturbed in 
the shelves of our public libraries. The works of great 
authors make them a name ; but in the case of Dr. Cook 
the process is reversed, — it is his celebrity as a Church 
leader that has made a name for his works. His historical 
volumes appeared at nearly the same time with the " Life 
of Knox," by Dr. M'Crie, and both works traverse nearly 
the same ground, and discuss the same principles. What 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 307 



have been their respective histories as literary undertak- 
ings, or what the comparative amount of influence which 
they have exerted on opinion? It is who-lly unnecessary 
to answer the question ; it is quite enough to ask it. The 
great historical genius has reared a monument to the fame 
of his country conspicuous over Europe, and wdiose preg- 
nant record has been translated into well-nigh all her 
tongues. The man of respectable general talent who set 
himself to write history is himself a sort of finger-post, 
visible in a narrow r area, by which we contrive to find out 
his work. The same character of obscure respectability 
attaches to his labors as Professor of Moral Philosophy in 
the University of St. Andrews. Is the fact questioned? 
If ill-founded, it can surely be easily met. What truths 
has he discovered? What new system has he invented? 
What old one has he invigorated? What fresh impulse 
has he given to the study of his science ? What striking 
figure even, or happy illustration, has he originated ? Who 
quotes his remarks? Who asserts his originality? There 
is but one answer — " None ! " Dr. Cook is simply a man 
of good sense, conversant with tangibilities, — things that 
can be seen and handled, — but singularly ill-fitted to calcu- 
late regarding the invisible elements of power by which 
the tangible and the material are moved and governed. 
He is eminently a matter-of-fact man ; but the balance by 
which he weighs is a balance of only one scale, and he 
overloads it with the temporal and the secular. Few men 
stand more in need of knowing, as a first principle, that 
the invisible may be without body, and yet not without 
' weight. 

Now, mark, beside the Doctor, a man of a very different 
# appearance, — in stature not exceeding the middle size, 
but otherwise of such large proportions that they might 
serve a robust man of six feet. We read of ships of the 
line cut down to frigates, and of frigates cut down to gun- 
boats. Here is a very large man cut down to the middle 
size ; and, as if still further to exaggerate the figure, there 



308 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



is a considerable degree of obesity besides. Hence a very 
marked uncouthness of outline, with which the gestures 
correspond. Rut it is an uncouthness in which there is 
nothing ludicrous: it is an uncouthness associated evi- 
dently with power, as in the case of Churchill and Gibbon, 
or in the still better known case of Dr. Johnson, Mark 
the head. It is of large capacity, — one of the largest in 
the Assembly, perhaps, and of formidable development. 
The region of propensity is so ample that it gives to the 
back part of the head a semi-spherical form. The fore- 
head is broad and perpendicular, but low, and partially 
hidden by a profusion of strong black hair, largely tinged 
with gray. The development of the coronal region is 
well-nigh concealed from the same cause ; but, judging 
from the general flatness, it is inferior to that of either the 
posterior or anterior portions of the head. The features 
are not handsome ; but, in their rudely-blocked massive- 
ness, there are evident indications of coarse vigor. He 
speaks, and the voice seems as uncommon as the appear- 
ance of the man. There is a mixture of very deep and 
very shrill tones, and the effect is heightened still further 
by a strong northern accent ; but it rings powerfully on 
the ear, and, in even the remoter galleries, not a single 
tone is lost. That man might address in the open air 
some eight or ten thousand persons. He is the very beau 
ideal of a vigorous democrat, — a popular leader, born for a 
time of tumults and commotions. Dr. Johnson threatened 
on one occasion to raise a mob; and no one acquainted 
with his indomitable force of character can doubt that 
Dr. Johnson could have done it, and that the mob would 
have looked up to him as their leader. The man we de- 
scribe — if there be truth in natural signs, or if nature has 
written her mark with no wilful intention to deceive — 
could lead, and head a mob too. But where is conjecture 
carrying us? That uncouth, powerful-looking man, so 
fitted apparently for leading the masses broke loose, is the 
great friend and confidant, and, so far at least as argument 



SKETCHES OP THE GENERAL* ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 309 



and statement are concerned, the grand caterer, — flapper, 
as Gulliver would perhaps say, — of the tory Earls of Dal- 
housie, Haddington, and Aberdeen. If nature intended 
him for a popular leader, never surely was there an indi- 
vidual more sadly misplaced. We have before us the 
redoubtable Mr. Robertson, of Ellon, — the second name, 
and first man, of his party. 

Mr. Robertson is a good illustration of what can be ac- 
complished by sheer force of character. He is eminent in 
no one department of literature or science. His mind is as 
little elegant as his person. His style is cumbrous and 
heavy, unenlightened by fancy, or uninformed by philo- 
sophical principle. His range of fact is exceedingly narrow ; 
his learning not above the average of country clergymen. 
He set himself to promulgate to the world, in a bulky pam- 
phlet, the views on Non-Intrusion entertained by the early 
reformers; and, omitting entirely the previous step of first 
acquainting himself with what he professed to communi- 
cate, he drew his knowledge, as he wrote, from the speeches 
of the Lords of Session in the Auchterarder case, copying, 
all unwittingly, in his extracts, the very blunders of the 
printer as part of the text. He pronounced on the judg- 
ment of Calvin at a time when he only knew Calvin in the 
quotation of Lord Medwyn. And yet, though thus super- 
ficial and unaccomplished, with no name beyond the Scot- 
tish Church or the present controversy, Mr. Robertson is 
undoubtedly the natural head of his party, — the leader of 
the forlorn hope of Moderatism. He has character, cour- 
age, momentum, and unyielding firmness. 

Observe, next, that elderly and yet active, young-looking 
man in the front seat. He is of the middle size, slightly 
but well made, and, for a Scotchman, singularly mercurial 
in all his motions. There is nothing remarkable in the 
form of the head or forehead, and the size certainly does 
not exceed the average, if, indeed, it does not fall much 
below it. The features would be handsome were it not 
for that singularly disagreeable Voltaire-like expression, — 



310 SKETCHES OF THE 'GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



quite enough of itself to mar the beauty of an Apollo. 
There is a fidgetiness about the figure,- an apparent ina- 
bility of sitting still, a sort of uneasy-conscience activity. 
The head jerks from the right to the left, and from the left 
to the right again. Never was there a more inveterate 
whisperer, or a more persevering smiler of smiles. Let 
fortune frown as it may, that man has always a smile in 
store, — we should perhaps rather say a silent laugh ; but 
he would be a miserable physiognomist who could mistake 
his smiles for those of enjoyment or triumph. "These 
things are my diversion," said Pope to Richardson, point- 
ing with a ghastly grin to one of the pamphlets with which 
he was ceaselessly annoyed. " These things are but my 
diversion." — " May Heaven preserve me!" ejaculated Rich- 
ardson, as he quitted the room, "from diversion such as 
has been this day the lot of Pope." The smiles of the 
figure before us become contorted at times, like those wit- 
nessed by the guidsire of Wandering Willie amid the 
ghastly revellers in " Red-Gauntlet," when his very nails 
became blue with horror, and the marrow was chilled in his 
bones. The mercurial, smart, oldish-young man has risen 
to speak. His voice is clear, — so is his style; but, unlike 
the other two speakers, he succeeds in but a very faint 
decree indeed in attracting- the attention of the House. 
There is a deplorable want of weight about him, both mor- 
ally and intellectually; and the audience seem but to listen 
occasionally, to pick up from him extreme notions, obsolete 
for nearly the last quarter of a century, but curious as illus- 
trative of the Moderatism of the last age. We have before 
us a Moderate of the extreme school, — a man true in all 
respects to the old character of his party, — Dr. James 
Bryce, of Calcutta. 

There are amusing points about the Doctor's character; 
and of all the Church's opponents, he is perhaps the man 
whom the Church could worst afford to lose. The opposi- 
tion of the others, however determined, is modified in its 
ostensible object, if not in its intensity, by the pressure 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 311 



from without. The Doctor's opposition is the unchanged 
opposition of the year 1796, so famous in the annals of the 
Church for its debate on missions. We have now before 
us the first literary production of Dr. Bryce, in the form of 
a volume of 380 pages, — a prize essay, entitled a "Sketch 
of British India." It was written to maintain that "to 
attempt diffusing Christianity in India by means of mis- 
sionaries (we employ the Doctor's own words), would be a 
work not only fruitless in the issue, but dangerous to the 
peace and prosperity of that country, and ultimately fatal 
to the British empire in the East." This prize essay proved 
the foundation of the Doctor's fortunes. No danger to 
the interests of British commerce in Hindustan could be 
apprehended from a man holding such rational views ; and 
so Dr. Bryce was sent out by the East India Company to 
represent Scottish Presbyterianism in Calcutta, and to 
eschew missions. Has the Doctor been since converted to 
other views? Why not, then, give the public at least one 
pamphlet that will read, in the form of a " true and faith- 
ful narrative of the conversion of the Rev. Dr. James 
Bryce " ? It would form, surely, a very curious work in 
itself, and an interesting addition to Dr. Crichton's two- 
volume list of converts besides. Cowper speaks of his 
letters as the mere "shavings" of his mind, — things planed 
off and cast away. Few minds of the present day cast off 
more shavings than that of Dr. Bryce ; but it is a mere 
deal-mind to the back. He published his prize essay in 
Scotland : it saw the light, and died. He preached news- 
paper paragraphs in India : they not only died themselves, 
but were well-nigh the means of killing others. He printed 
sermons, and accused Dr. Andrew Thomson of making 
money by reviewing them. Do any of our readers know 
anything of the sermons of Dr. Bryce? And now he is 
casting off shavings as lustily as ever on the Church ques- 
tion. The number, however, is no doubt exaggerated. 
Almost all the more absurdly Erastian pamphlets, which 
cannot be read even by the men who try, are attributed to 
the pen of Dr. Bryce. 



312 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



The more notable men of the party are soon exhausted. 
Observe, a little to the Doctor's right, that tall, thin man, 



son, of Ellon, as a large man cut down to the middle size. 
Here, on the contrary, we have a man of the middle size 
stretched out to a stature of some four or five inches more 
than nature seemed to have intended. It would appear, 
too, as if the elongating process had been restricted chiefly 
to the neck, face, and head. Has the reader ever marked 
how figures seem to lengthen when viewed through a pane 
roughened by the bulb on which the glass had been formed ? 
The appearance may convey some idea, though an exag- 
gerated one, of what w r e describe. That rather peculiar- 
looking man is Dr. Hill, Professor of Theology in the 
University of Glasgow, — the gentleman preferred by the 
Senatus to Dr. Chalmers. We need hardly add that he 
is a grave mediocritist, a solemn enunciator of common- 
places, a man who never originated a great thought, and 
who never sported with a small one. Shall we describe 
any of the others ? That rather good-looking man, w T ith 
the gray head, brown whiskers, straight nose, fresh com- 
plexion, and very sharp facial angle, is Mr. Bisset, of Bour- 
tie, who bids Church extensionists peruse his pamphlet, and 
pause ; and the adust, robust, middle-aged, less handsome 
man beside him is Mr. Paull, of Tullynessle, whose sur- 
name begins with the same letter as that of Mr. Pirie, of 
Dyce. They are both decidedly the most influential men 
in their respective Sessions, and, like the man in the play, 
have been speaking prose all their lives long. 



The better-known men of the minority we exhausted In 
our last ; we now turn to the vastly more numerous body 
on the left of the moderator — ■ the party who represent in 




PART THIRD. THE EVANGELICALS. 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OP 1841. 313 

the Assembly the great majority of the members and 
elders of the Church of Scotland, and, with but a very few 
exceptions, all its lay members. In one respect they differ 
strikingly in their appearance, as a body, from their antag- 
onists. There are among them many aged and venerable 
men, — quite as many, at least, as on the opposite side. But 
their proportion of men in early or middle life is greater 
in a very marked degree. Slight as the circumstance may 
seem, it is in reality an important one. It indicates the 
tendencies of the age and the history of the parties, and 
whispers of a principle of death and diminution on the 
one side, and of vitality and increase on the other. The 
same remark applied in this country, in the times of the 
Reformation, to those two antagonist parties of which the 
one held by the obsolete superstition, and the other by the 
revived faith. Few conversions take place late in life. It 
has been stated by Dr. M'Crie that the conversion of the 
elder Argyle, when a very old man, was an extraordinary 
instance, and that it stands almost alone in the history of 
the Scottish Reformation. Pfizier, in his " Biography of 
Luther," remarks, in a similar style, that it was chiefly the 
young, or at least men who had not passed the term of 
middle age, who ranged themselves on the side of the 
restored Christianity, and fought the battles of Protes- 
tantism. 

The moderator of the Assembly has just risen to mark 
the rise of a member of court. There is a peculiar dig- 
nity in the manner and appearance of Dr. Gordon, and a 
noble and manly beauty in the countenance. His stature 
does not exceed the middle size, and yet the figure so fills 
the eye that he appears tall. The complexion is fresh and 
clear, but the face is thin, and the hair bears its marked 
tinge of bright silver. The forehead is of extraordinary 
height — quite as tall and erect as even that in the more 
idealized portraits of Shakspeare ; and, though the breadth 
is less, it is quite as finely rounded a-top. "A forehead of 
that type," said the late Dr. Spurzheim, when in Edinburgh 

27 



314 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



a good many years since, " is one of perhaps the least com- 
mon which nature produces." There is not in the whole 
Church a more exquisitely elegant or truly noble mind 
than that of Dr. Gordon, or one whose courage, with all 
his gentleness of disjDosition, would mount higher in a 
time of extremity. 

Now, mark that elderly gentleman standing at the end 
of one of the middle seats, against the crimson-covered 
barrier which fences off the Lord High Commissioner's 
portion of the house from the central portion assigned to 
members of Assembly. He has risen, not to speak, but 
merely for change of posture, for the debate has been pro- 
tracted, and he has been patiently waiting it out, to record 
his vote with the evangelical party in the cause of disci- 
pline and reform. He is a man rather above the middle 
stature, well made, and, though plainly, very neatly dressed. 
Age has silvered his hair, and there is a slight stoop of the 
shoulders ; but the vigor of the figure is left unimpaired ; 
and the silent though emphatic testimony of the counte- 
nance, the compression of mouth indicative of firmness, 
the cast of sober thought which dwells in the singularly 
significant lines of the forehead, the deeply contemplative 
expression of eye, all indicate an intellect in its prime. 
The complexion is pale, but healthy. Observe the form 
of head. The silvery hair clusters round the forehead; 
but causality, rising full, broad, and high, from an ample 
base formed by largely developed knowing organs, stands 
out like a tower, shading the locks, as it were, to either 
side, and strongly catches the light on its rounded upper 
line, as in the portraits of Burke and Franklin. "We have 
before us a man of more than European reputation, — a 
man whose name, pronounced in any part of the world in 
which letters are cultivated or science is known, would at 
once ensure recognition and respect. No writer of the 
present age unites a higher degree of literary ability to 
exact science ; no writer of our own country unites them 
in a degree equally high. The Earl of Aberdeen, true to 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 315 



his character as a diplomatist, and indifferent apparently 
to character of any other kind, could describe the evan- 
gelical party as composed of men low in accomplishment 
and intellect compared with their opponents. Spoke his 
lordship the troth ? We stake the intellect and accom- 
plishment of that one man, not merely against those of 
any individual on the opposite side, but against the intel- 
lect and accomplishment of the whole opposite side put 
together; appealing confidently to the country for its 
verdict in the case, and yet confining our statement of the 
merits to the bare pronunciation of a name. That man, 
with the nobly philosophic forehead, and (to quote from 
his own description of Sir Isaac Newton) "the fine head 
of hair, as white as silver, without baldness," is Sir David 
Brewster. 

The part taken by Sir David in the present struggle is 
suited to tell powerfully on ingenuous minds in behalf of 
the Church. When the collision between the civil and 
ecclesiastical courts took place, he had not made up his 
mind on the problem which it involved. He saw too 
clearly, however, not to see that the question was no indif- 
ferent one, or one in which he could remain neutral, but 
that, as a subject of the realm, and a member and office- 
bearer in the Church, it would be imperative on him to 
act some determinate part regarding it. He accordingly 
set himself carefully to examine. He read, and studied, 
and brought to bear upon the subject the same powers of 
patient investigation which had rendered him so eminently 
successful in the field of scientific inquiry. What has 
been the result ? It is only necessary to mark the position 
he has taken up in order to ascertain the conclusion at 
which he has arrived. But there were, perhaps, disturbing 
influences that interfered with the process. Will it be 
deemed a disturbing influence that Sir David was born a 
reformer; that throughout life he has been the determined 
opponent of sinecurists, who profess to teach, and do 
nothing, and uncompromisingly hostile to every immor- 



316 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 

ality in the class who set themselves to acquire a smatter- 
ing of theology, in order that they may become qualified, 
in the sense of Dr. Cook, to teach it again for a bit of 
bread? 

The moderator again rises. A loud, riming noise has 
broken out in the galleries. At least two-thirds of the 
members of Assembly have joined in it, and the business 
of the court is interrupted. A very distinguished mem- 
ber has just entered. He is a man well stricken in years. 
His pace is slow, and his locks, like those of the two gen- 
tlemen just described, are bathed in silver, — " the lyart 
haffets wearing thin and bare." His person is large and 
massy, though his stature does not perhaps exceed five 
feet nine or five feet ten inches ; and there is no tendency 
to obesity. He is very plainly dressed. The complexion 
is pale, the face large, and the features uncommonly firm 
and massy. There is an inexplicable, mysterious, unde- 
scribable something in the expression, that inspires awe 
and respect. And mark the head. It would be saying 
marvellously little were we but to say that there is not 
such another head in the house, — we may add, not such 
another head in Edinburgh, in Scotland, Britain, Europe. 
The breadth across the forehead is what the phrenologists 
term not simply large, but enormous. The length, too, in 
profile, is so very great, that the bulky heads around seem 
but of moderate size. The front portion, however, from 
the ear to the forehead, is considerably massier in propor- 
tion than the posterior region, and stands up more con- 
spicuously ; and there is a noble development a-top. He 
has seated himself a few feet to the moderator's left. The 
grave, deep expression seems as fixed as the features to 
which they impart so solemn a character. But he is evi- 
dently following the speaker — one of the most powerful 
in the house — with much interest; and all at once the 
countenance is lighted up in a manner as difficult to 
describe as the expression which has just disappeared. 
We can compare it to but the sudden lighting up of an 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 317 



alabaster vase, <or to an instantaneous gleam of sunshine. 
The expression slowly changes, until it has passed into the 
more habitual one ; and he rises to address the Assembly. 
All at once every individual present has grown a zealous 
conservator of the peace ; but for half a moment the 
"hush, hush," is too general, and makes more noise than 
it allays. 

The speech has the disadvantage of being read, not 
spoken, and read at first with several stops and interrup- 
tions, and in a rather low though audible tone. But there 
is an intense attention already excited, despite the appar- 
ent disadvantages. As the speaker proceeds, the voice 
rises, strengthens, deepens, till it seems to roll in thunder 
through the house. There is energetic action, confined 
chiefly, however, to the right arm and shoulder. The 
earnestness is overpowering. Even the dullest hearer, 
firing as he listens, feels himself carried along by the o'er- 
mastering force of an eloquence whose components can 
scarce be analyzed, but which is at once power of charac- 
ter, of argument, and of illustration, — an irresistible sin- 
cerity, that, through a magic sympathy, makes others sin- 
cere too, at least for the time, — and a vehement poetry, 
that seems but to pass through the imagination that it may 
assail and overpower the heart. Eloquence has been com- 
pared to a stream ; but here the comparison seems inade- 
quate. We must have overbearing ponderosity and heat 
as well as resistless rapidity. We must have weight as 
well as motion. If we illustrate by a stream at all, it must 
be by a stream of dense, molten lava pouring down the 
steep side of a mountain, and floating away on its surface 
rock and stones, and entire buildings. " There is no man," 
said Jeffrey of the present speaker, "that so enables me to 
form a conception of the oratory of Demosthenes." Need 
we name the far-known leader of the Scottish Church, Dr. 
Thomas Chalmers, " the greatest of living Scotsmen," or 
attempt drawing the character of a man more extensively 
known than perhaps any other of the present age, and 
destined to grow upon posterity ? 



318 SKETCHES OE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



Mark, in the same corner of the house, But several seat- 
breadths further away from the moderator, a person of a 
veiy different appearance. He is below the middle stature, 
and, though turned of thirty by perhaps five or six years, 
seems at this distance, from the smallness of his features 
and figure, some years younger. His person is well formed, 
his features good, and the expression seems indicative of 
great activity and energy. The forehead is very remark- 
able. We are by no means sure of the truth of phrenology 
in its minuter details ; but nature does certainly seem to 
set her mark on the foreheads of men of extraordinary 
capacity. In the man before us, the part immediately 
above the eyes — the seat, it is alleged, of the knowing 
organs — is in exact proportion to the face below; but the 
upper part swells out in the region of causality and com- 
parison, especially in the former, so that it projects at 
either side, and forms a broad bar across. There is perhaps 
scarce a head in the kingdom in which the reflective organs 
are more amply developed ; and the mind consorts well in 
this instance with the material indications. They mark 
decidedly one of the ablest men in the Church, — a man 
fitted for every walk of literature, — whether power or 
elegance of intellect, just taste, or nice discrimination, be 
the qualities required. It is curious to remark how un- 
willing people generally are to believe that a jDerson by 
much too short for a grenadier may yet be a great man. 
It is at least equally curious to note the delight which 
nature seems to take in iterating and reiterating the fact. 
A very large proportion of the intellect of the age just 
passing away was lodged with men who fell short of the 
middle size. Napoleon was scarcely five feet six inches in 
height, and so very slim in early life as to be well-nigh lost 
in his boots and his uniform. Byron was no taller. Lord 
Jeffrey is not so tall. Campbell and Moore are still shorter 
than Jeffrey; and Wilberforce was a less man than any of 
them. The same remark has been made of the great minds 
of England who flourished about the middle of the seven- 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841, 819 



teenth century. One very remarkable instance we may 
perhaps exhibit to the reader in a new aspect. In the 
August of 1790, some workmen, engaged in repairing the 
church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, found under the floor of 
the chancel an old coffin, which, as shown by the sexton's 
register, had rested there undisturbed for a hundred and 
sixteen years. For a grown person it was a very small 
one. Its length did not exceed five feet ten inches, and it 
measured only sixteen inches across at the broadest part. 
The body almost invariably stretches after death, so that 
the bodies of females of the middle stature require coffins 
of at least equal length ; and the breadth, even outside, 
did not fully come up to the average breadth of shoulder 
in adults. Whose remains rested in that wasted old coffin? 
Those of a man the most truly masculine in his cast of mind, 
and the most gigantic in intellect, which Britain, or the 
world, ever produced, — the defender of the rights of the 
people of England ; as a scholar, first among the learned 
of Europe ; as a poet, not only more sublime than any 
other uninspired writer, but, as has been justly said, more 
fertile in true sublimities than all other uninspired writers 
put together. The small old coffin disinterred from out the 
chancel of St. Giles contained the remains of that John 
Milton who died at his house in Bunhill Fields in the win- 
ter of 1674, — the all-powerful controversialist who, in the 
cause of the people, crushed the learned Salmasius full in 
the view of Europe, — the poet who produced the "Para- 
dise Lost." But we find we have exhausted our space for 
the present, ere we have finished or named our portrait. 



PART FOURTH. THE EVANGELICALS. 

We resume our half-finished portrait. The gentleman 
whose appearance was sketched in our last has risen to 
address the Assembly, and a general "hush" runs along 
the galleries, like that which greeted the speaker previously 



320 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



described. The voice is clear and well modulated; the 
action simple. The arm is stretched out at an angle raised 
a very little above the horizontal; but, as the speaker 
warms, the angle rises. Mark, first, the wonderful flow of 
language. Of all the members of Assembly, that member 
has perhaps the readiest command of English ; and his 
spoken style the most nearly approaches to a written one. 
The words pour in a continuous stream, fitting themselves, 
with a singular flexibility, to every object which they 
encircle in their course ; insinuating themselves, if we may 
so speak, into the innermost intricacies of every thought ; 
sweeping, with a steady certainty, along the lines of every 
distinction, however nicely drawn ; and, while thus exqui- 
sitely true to the mental processes whose findings they 
signify, modulating themselves, as if by some such natural 
law as that which gives regularity and beauty to the crys- 
tal, into the combinations which best satisfy'the ear, and 
accord most truly with the rules of composition as an art. 
Language is a noble instrument, though there be but few 
who can awaken all its tones. There is something very 
different in the extempore power here exhibited, from that, 
slowly exerted through complete mastery over language, 
shown by our more accomplished writers, — something so 
different that it is a comparatively rare matter to find the 
same individual possessed >of both. The language of Fox, 
so fluent and powerful in debate, trickled but slowly, and 
not very gracefully, from his pen. The written style of 
Chatham was loose, redundant, and not overladen with 
meaning. And both Dryden and Addison, on the other 
hand, and, we may add, our own countryman, Adam Smith, 
though great masters of English as authors, — men thor- 
oughly acquainted with every nicety and elegancy of the 
tongue, — could scarce find words enough, when they 
spoke, to express their commonest ideas. But some few 
happy geniuses have been masters of language in both 
departments, and have spoken and written with equal 
power and facility; and we have one of these in the 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 321 



speaker before us. Cowper could remark to his friend 
John Newton, in a half-sad, half-sportive vein, that the 
world was singularly unwilling to admit any style to be 
good which recommended Christianity; and most of the 
writings of this gentleman labor under this disadvantage. 
But the man who ventures to deny them the praise of 
great vigor and great elegance, would himself require to 
stand on higher literary ground than that occupied by any 
enemy of the Cross in the present day. 

The subject of the speech is a question of heresy. There 
have been numerous charges preferred against the pannel, 
,all of them very serious, — all referring to beliefs within 
whose sphere of operation the offers of the gospel must 
have been rendered of non-effect; but they have been 
submitted to the court in a detached and separate form, 
and we feel disposed to wonder how any one mind could 
have fallen into error on so many different points. Mark 
how the speaker grapples with the subject, — how he 
traces the various branches of heresy to one common root, 
— demonstrating to the conviction of all that they form 
parts of a coherent system, — a system as coherent as that 
of Robert Owen, or Hume, or Hobbes ; and that the pan- 
nel, having once laid down his erroneous first principles, 
must have been as miserable a logician as a divine had he 
not derived from them all the various inductions of error 
which form the counts of the indictment. And, this point 
firmly established, mark now how the speaker brings the 
various counts to the standard of God's word. Mark how 
irresistibly complete in every case the demonstration of 
the errors, and yet how very brief the statement. We 
need hardly add that this singularly able and accomplished 
man is the gentleman whom the Earl of Aberdeen would 
have so fain recommended to the Calton Jail, — the Rev. 
Mr. Candlish, of St. George's. 

But who is that tall and very strongly-built man in the 
same corner of the house ? — so strongly built, that we are 
scarce aware his stature considerably exceeds six feet, 



322 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



except when we see men of the ordinary size beside him. 
He is large-limbed, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and 
his very large head is covered by dark-brown hair, as 
thickly curled as that of the Hercules Farnese. His com- 
plexion is pale, indicating perhaps a sedentary life and 
studious habits ; the nose is slightly aquiline, the com- 
pression of the lips speaks of firmness; but the general 
expression is one of mildness and tranquillity, and he 
seems marked by a peculiar quietness of manner. A 
speaker on the opposite side has been making some very 
strong statements, and the gentleman we describe has 
been marking a few jottings, in the course of the speech^ 
in a small memorandum-book. His employment has been 
matter of remark in the galleries. There has been a good 
deal of whispering among the audience, and the whisperers 
invariably turn their eyes in his direction ; and some of 
the more disadvantageously placed among them stand up 
on tip-toe to catch a glimpse of him. He rises, for the 
other speaker has sat down, and comes forward to the 
open space beside the table of the house. One-half the 
spectators in the galleries and the area behind rise too, 

— rather, it would seem, in consequence of some sympa- 
thetic influence than from any exertion of the will ; but 
the cry of "seats, seats!" brings them all down again, and 
silence is instantly restored. The speech opens with a 
few vigorous, compact, logical sentences, enunciated in a 
tone of subdued power, but peculiarly indicative of firm- 
ness and resolution. The style is less flexible than that 
of the former speaker described, and, though the sen- 
tences roll on without pause or interruption, less copious ; 
but there is an even more concentrated strength, and the 
precision is at least equally great. Mark how the words 
arrange themselves into sentences, which could be punctu- 
ated more readily than those now flowing from our pen, 

— so very distinct are the members, and so very defined 
the meaning. Mark, too, the strictly logical sequence of 
the thoughts, the clearness and order of the propositions, 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OE 1841. 323 



and how the inevitable and undeniable conclusions, con- 
densed into the concluding members of single sentences, 
give more than epigrammatic point to the style. The 
amount of meaning thrown at times into a short, compact 
antithesis is altogether amazing. The speaker warms as 
he proceeds. The voice heightens; and such is the force 
and energy of the tones, that the arguments seem pro- 
jected, missile-like, against his opponent. There is corre- 
sponding action. The right fist, firmly clenched, is raised 
every two seconds to the shoulder, and then aimed with 
tremendous force in the direction of the floor. We are 
reminded of the "iron man of iron mould" in the allegory, 
who went about with his huge flail, beating out the grains 
of truth from the chaff and stubble of falsehood. How 
palpable every incongruity in the reasonings of his an- 
tagonist has been rendered! how thoroughly have the 
misstatements been exposed! how completely have the 
sophisms been frittered to pieces ! And now, after every 
flaw in their structure has been pointed out, they are held 
up, as it were, at arm's length, to the derision of all. So 
entire is the exposure, so very finished the demolition, 
that, without the employment of a single ludicrous idea, 
the effect is that of the most caustic ridicule. An expres- 
sion of blank helplessness fills on almost every counte- 
nance on the opposite side of the house. These arguments 
cannot be met, these statements cannot be gainsayed ; 
and they know it. The speaker has finished, and the indi- 
vidual who has encountered so tremendous an overthrow 
rises ; but he rises like William of Deloraine, when, dizzy, 
blind, and haggard, he staggered into the lists " a ghastly 
and half-naked man.'' He has concluded, in his confusion, 
that some reply is essential; but his thoughts are scat- 
tered; and so, after saying nothing in a few sentences, 
he sits down again. Who is this right stout man-at-arms 
who has wrought such signal confusion in the array of the 
opposition? Our readers are, we doubt not, prepared 
to furnish the name, — Mr. William Cunningham, of Edin- 
burgh. 



324 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



Turn next to that gentleman a few paces away. His 
stature rises a very little above the middle size ; but his 
person, though well proportioned, is rather delicate than 
robust. There is something very gentlemanly in the 
whole appearance. An air of openness and courtesy per- 
vades the countenance ; the complexion is fresh ; the 
features are small ; the nose straight and sharp, but not 
prominent; the forehead well developed. He is a man 
evidently not turned of forty, and yet the head is bald, 
showing a fine fulness in the region of sentiment. He 
rises to address the Assembly, and a deep attention is 
instantly excited. His voice, though clear, is not strong; 
but the silence, from this circumstance, is just all the more 
deep. And mark the classic beauty of the language, and 
how very nicely the words fit the ideas which they are 
employed to express. There is a singular acuteness of 
intellect exhibited, a minuteness of information — espe- 
cially regarding the territorial lines of demarcation between 
the civil and the ecclesiastical — that renders cavil hope- 
less, and a staid sobriety of judgment that solicits and 
ensures confidence. Few men so completely possess the 
art of making facts tell by placing them in a light so clear 
that the just inference becomes inevitable ; and they thus 
come to serve the purposes of both fact and argument too. 
There is a refreshing manliness of spirit in the whole tone, 
and a nobleness of aspiration after the good, the just, 
the fair, the honorable, which even the men who differ 
from him most, if in any degree men of candor and right 
feeling, cannot but recognize and esteem. A gleam of 
imagination occasionally lights up the simple elegance of 
his style, and he concludes in a vein of chaste and graceful 
poetry. That speaker is Alexander Dunlop, — a man 
authoritatively quoted in our civil courts in questions of 
ecclesiastical polity, and well and honorably known in 
the present momentous struggle as a powerful champion 
on the side of the Church, and a shrewd and sagacious 
leader. 



SKETCHES OE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 325 



The Church of Scotland has hereditary claims on Mr. 
Dunlop. Her cause is a family one — a sort of heir-loom. 
One of his ancestors — the well-known Principal Carstairs, 
the friend and adviser of William of Orange — was sub- 
jected, for her sake, in the persecution of the seventeenth 
century, to the thumbkins, and bore the torture without 
shrinking. An ancestor in the male line, now known as 
the elder Dunlop, to distinguish him from his descendant, 
was the editor of that admirable Collection of Confessions 
of Faith, Catechisms, and Books of Order and Discipline, 
of public authority in the Church, published early in the 
last century, and now recognized as so valuable that it 
sells for some four or five times the original price. The 
cause of the Church is thus a hereditary cause to this gen- 
tleman, — a circumstance which must no doubt have had 
its predisposing influence ; but it does surely bear on the 
present collision, that the lawyer who was deemed of 
highest authority in Scotch ecclesiastical law ere the con- 
flict began, — a man whose opinions and facts on ecclesi- 
astical questions have been quoted by pleaders as decisive, 
and sustained by judges as just, — should have so deter- 
minedly and unhesitatingly taken up his position on the 
side of the Church. The special pleaders who now most 
strenuously oppose him were in the habit, scarce three 
years ago, of quoting him as an authority. We do not 
know a better illustration than Mr. Dunlop of Bacon's 
remark, "A man young in years may be yet old in hours, 
if he has lost no time." Commentators on law rarely- 
pass into authorities during their lives, and are not often 
referred to in court by their contemporaries ; and yet we 
have learned that Mr. Dunlop was little turned of thirty 
when his work on "Parochial Law" came to be regarded 
as of standard authority. 

Mark, now, that gentleman in the seat under the gallery. 
He is of the middle size, and well but not strongly made. 
His complexion is of a transparent paleness, that speaks 
perhaps of severe study, perhaps of delicate health, — very 

28 



326 SKETCHES OP THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OP 1841. 



possibly of both. His features are regular ; the nose is of 
the straight Grecian form ; the forehead is of large capac- 
ity, and very amply developed in the region of causality. 
There is a cast of abstraction in the expression. His age 
approaches fifty, and yet, though pale and thin, we might 
well deem him some ten years younger, from the transpar- 
ency of the complexion, and the smooth, unwrinkled char- 
acter of the skin. We have before us Dr. David Welsh, 
the friend and biographer of the great metaphysician Dr. 
Thomas Brown, and one of the most acutely philosophic 
intellects of Scotland in the present day. His biography 
of his friend, independently of its merits regarded as a 
well- written narrative of the incidents and events which 
marked the life of an extraordinary man, is one of the 
finest pieces of metaphysical criticism which the present 
century has produced. Dr. Welsh stands very high as a 
professor of Church History, — a professorship which, in 
the last age, when there were many to assail the Church, 
and few to defend her, was held to require less talent than 
any of the others, but which has now come to be differ- 
ently regarded. In no department of history is a profound 
philosophy more indispensably necessary ; in no department 
has intellectual power, added to Christian principle, a more 
promising field of usefulness. How much has Dr. M'Crie 
accomplished as an ecclesiastical historian ! and how im- 
mense the influence which his writings exercise on public 
opinion ! The professor of Church History has to meet with 
antagonists such as Hume and Gibbon. Moderatism in 
the last age could cultivate the friendship of these men, 
and yet hold, even when complimenting their philosophy 
and their literature, that men of the most ordinary capacity 
were qualified to counteract the jDoison which they were 
assiduously spreading in the historical track. Another 
opinion prevails now ; and so Dr. Welsh is Professor of 
Church History in the University of Edinburgh. His tes- 
timony on the side of the Church in the present struggle 
we deem very valuable. It bears on the same point with 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 327 



that of Mr. Dunlop, but it rests on its own independent 
grounds. Their separate evidence has the merit of being at 
once distinct in basis and uniform in bearing. We have 
in the one the highest authority in Scotch ecclesiastical 
law, in the other the highest authority in Scotch ecclesi- 
astical history. 



PART FIFTH. THE EVANGELICALS. 



We resume our sketches. A gentleman of a very strik- 
ing figure has just entered the court, — evidently a mem- 
ber of some note, for there runs along the gallery a hurried 
whisper, and we may here and there see an extended finger 
pointing him out to a stranger. He is an erect, muscular, 
lathy man, some six or seven inches above the ordinary 
stature. His height, at the lowest estimate, cannot fall 
short of six feet two inches ; and the mould into which his 
large frame has been cast, "the square-turned joints and 
length of limb," indicate mingled strength and activity. 
He is standing manfully in the breach, in the present con- 
flict, in behalf of the Church, and has to encounter many 
an assailant; but were the breach not a figurative, but 
an actual and material one, — such a breach as the can- 
non of Napoleon made in the walls of Jean d'Acre, — and 
were that gentleman's well-pointed arguments converted 
into a good half-pike, there are very many ingenious men 
in the opposition who would entertain serious objections 
against joining issue with him on the question of its prac- 
ticability. The countenance is marked by the lines of 
resolution and firmness. The complexion is dark, indicat- 
ing what phrenologists term the bilious temperament, and 
the facial angle unusually full, approaching more nearly to 
an angle of ninety than is at all common in even the Cir- 
cassian type of head. The head appears large for the body, 
large as that is ; and, when seen in profile, such is the 
length from the ear to the forehead, that the line of the face 



328 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OP 1841. 



forms almost a square with the line a-top. Though not 
yet turned of forty, the thick strong hair, originally coal 
black, is tinged with gray, and, with the deep lines of the 
countenance joined to the dark complexion, speaks appar- 
ently of a period of life more advanced. He has risen to 
speak. Mark the clearness and power of the tones. They 
already reverberate through the house, though pitched 
apparently on a much lower key than that to which they 
are capable of ascending. Some of his remarks have pro- 
voked the anger of the opposition, and there rises a con- 
fused Babel-like hubbub of sound, loud enough to drown 
any two ordinary voices. Not that of the speaker, how- 
ever. Mark how it also rises higher and higher as the 
confusion swells ; and we «can still hear it ringing over all, 
"loud as a trumpet with a silver sound." The clamor sub- 
sides, and the speaker proceeds. The ideas are as clear as 
the tones in which they are conveyed, and there is much 
readiness of wit, and great lucidity of statement ; but the 
chief element of the speaker's power is his felt sincerity. 
There is a thorough, straightforward honesty of purpose 
about him, joined to an unfeigned, earnest zeal for the 
great first principles from which he derives all his deduc- 
tions, that, without disarming the hostility of his opponent, 
at least robs it of much of its bitterness. He can say 
severe things at times — very severe things — of Moder- 
atism, with its dead, inefficient form of Christianity, — a 
body without life, and in which the fermentation of putrid- 
ity has long since begun. He can say still severer things 
of the aristocracy, — - of the self-seeking arid exclusive 
spirit which led them of old to grasp what should have 
been in reality the patrimony of the people, the educa- 
tional and ecclesiastical funds of the country, through 
which schools and churches should have been erected and 
endowed ; and very severe things of their mean and nar- 
row-sighted policy in the present day. But there is 
" nought set down in malice." All arises from an honest 
conviction, unembittered by a single grain of the odium 



SKETCHES OP THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 329 

tlieologicwn, when he assails what he knows to be but a 
shadowy and unsubstantial semblance of religion, and, 
undisturbed by one particle of democratic jealousy, when 
he denounces, as alike wicked and foolish, the course pur- 
sued by the great body of the titled and high-born of our 
country. Mark his dress. He is no clergyman ; and, were 
he to come to count descents with the gentlemen on the 
opposite side who are so very forward in maintaining the 
cause and asserting the dignity of certain noble lords, — 
quite as forward as if they were their footmen, and engaged 
in battling, as in duty bound, for the honor of their livery, 
— it would be found that of these noble earls — for of 
their supporters and apologists we say nothing — not; a 
few would deem their genealogies mightily improved could 
they but claim relationship with some of his progenitors. 
We have before us Mr. Maitland Makgill Crichton, of Ran- 
keillor, — a gentleman one of whose ancestors in the male 
line was the friend of Knox, and a fellow-worker with him 
in the cause of the Reformation, — who can show, ranged 
among his family portraits, the portraits of that General 
Leslie who led the armies of the Covenant, and who is 
the undoubted representative in the present day of the 
ancient Lords of Crichton and Fendraught, though he has 
not yet asserted the title. 

It is singularly gratifying to meet with the good old 
Church names still enrolled on the side of the Church. 
The two vocables "Argyll" and "Aberdeen" express, 
when associated with the historical recollections proper to 
each, the whole controversy. It is particularly interesting, 
too, to find names that had well-nigh disappeared for the 
greater part of two centuries coming again into view, fixed, 
as it were, in exactly the same places as of old, — just as 
the fixed stars appear, when the night falls, in the very 
position in which they had been seen when the night fell 
last. We see in the list of the eldership the name of Brodie 
of Lethen, and that of another younger scion of the family. 
Presbytery, in our northern districts, had very few assert- 

28* 



330 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 

ers during the persecutions of the seventeenth century; 
but its few it had, — men who could both dare and suffer 
for its sake ; and among these the Brodies of Lethen take 
a prominent place. We have now before us a very scarce 
old work, the "Diary of Alexander Brodie, of Brodie," one 
of the Senators of the College of Justice of 1650, a staunch 
Covenanter, and a man of deep and fervent piety. We find 
in his notes frequent mention of his neighbor and relative, 
Brodie of Lethen, a person of a similar stamp. The time 
was one of great trouble and perplexity, — the winter of 
1654. Glencairn and his Highlanders were in possession 
of the open country. The season was singularly severe; 
for the sea had risen further on the land than for forty 
years before, and the Findhorn was coming down red from 
the hills, so high in flood as to be unfordable for several 
days, and the Highlanders could not get across to wreak 
their vengeance on Lethen. But at length they came, and 
burnt every house to the ground, with all the corn stored 
up from the previous autumn for the sustenance of the 
family and its dependents. When the enemy departed, 
the inmates, scattered for the time, again met. They met, 
in that dreary season, amid the blackened and wasted 
walls, when every streamlet was swollen into a river, and 
the winds howled amid the roofless and darkened turrets; 
but with what intent ? We employ the simple language 
of the diary, " To come under a new, firm, inviolable cov- 
enant with God, that they should be his, and he should be 
theirs." The vows of each are recorded. " Old Lethen? 
says the diary, "renewed his acknowledgments, and prayed 
the Lord for a willing, honest heart ; and desired to give 
up himself and his wealth, family, children, wife, and his 
own life, to the Lord, that he might be glorified in them, 
and that his life might not be in himself and to the world, 
but to, in, and for the Lord." His son, the heir of the 
house, was equally decided. " He professed his willing- 
ness to consecrate himself and his to God, and that, as 
long as he had a house or family, it should be the Lord's, 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 831 



He alone should be worshipped in it ; and he should have 
no God but Him." Now, we do think it well that the old 
Presbyterian party should reckon among its adherents so 
many of the old Presbyterian names. 

But we digress. Mark that elderly man beside the table. 
He is of the middle stature, but stoops slightly. His com- 
plexion is pale, inclining to sallow; the head, though not 
large, — at least not of the largest size, — is well propor- 
tioned ; and we may mark it in its full development, espe- 
cially in the regions of intellect and sentiment, for it is 
very bald. Has the reader ever seen Holbein's portrait of 
Erasmus, or a faithful print of it? Mark, then, that coun- 
tenance : the form of the nose, the compression of the thin 
lips, the acute and watchful expression of the eyes, the 
very complexion even, is that of the elegant and subtile- 
minded scholar of the age of Luther, whom no shade of 
distinction ever escaped, and who, if not always powerful, 
was at least always ingenious. He rises to speak, in reply 
to a spruce lawyer on the opposite side. The voice is not 
strong, — Ave at first hear very imperfectly, — but, though 
not strong, it is clear; and as the speaker warms, the tones 
heighten. He is evidently cutting the nerves of his oppo- 
nent's logic, not with a weighty weapon, but with a sharp 
one. The process has a considerable degree of quietness 
about it ; but the stroke is reiterated, and the nerves divide. 
We have before us Dr. Patrick Macfarlan, of Greenock. 

It has been often remarked that the two grand parties of 
the British legislature — its whigs and its tories (we em- 
ploy the words in their old meaning) — are alike necessary 
in preserving the balance of the state. With but the one 
party the wheels of government would revolve too rapidly; 
with but the other, they would either stick fast or slide 
backwards ; with both united, there is at once force enough 
to propel, and vis inertice enough to counteract any over- 
plus energy in the moving power. And hence slow but 
well regulated motion. Now, we can imagine two such 
parties in a Church blessed with a representative gov- 



332 SKETCHES OE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



ernment like ours, of which, somewhat in the manner 
described, the one would be of signal use to the other, — 
parties opposed to a considerable degree in ecclesiastical 
polity, but thoroughly at one in their views of doctrines 
and duties. These are certainly not the parties which 
divide it at present. It would be too much to have in the 
Church a single minister who did not preach the gospel ; 
nor could any good, but, on the contrary, much evil result 
from his being there. And in the ranks of Moderatism, 
how many are there by whom the gospel is not preached, 
and to whom it is not known ! But in the array of their 
opponents it is easy to discover the elements of two parties 
which might coexist in the Church for good, — one of them 
as a regulating influence, the other as an impelling force. 
We recognize in Dr. Macfarlan one of these personified ; 
and, of course, employ the word in its best sense when we 
say that in matters ecclesiastical he represents the tory. 
The Doctor, some thirty years ago, was a sound Non-In- 
trusionist, friendly to a modified patronage. He has seen 
since that time nearly all his party shooting ahead of him ; 
but what the Doctor was thirty years ago the Doctor is 
still. He is just a sound Non-Intrusionist, friendly to a 
modified patronage. Did the reader ever see on the banks 
of a navigable river a beacon fixed in the foreground, and 
the vessels sweeping past ? 

]STow, mark that strongly-featured man a few benches 
away. He is barely of the middle size, and stoutly made. 
The nose has an almost Socratic degree of concavity in its 
outline ; — indeed, the whole profile more nearly resembles 
that of Socrates, as shown in cameos and busts, than it 
does any other known profile to whom we could compare 
it. The expression of the lower part of the face indicates 
a man who, if once engaged in battling in a good cause, 
would fight long and doggedly ere he gave up the contest. 
The head is also marked by the Socratic outline in a sin- 
gularly striking degree ; the forehead is erect, broad, high, 
and the coronal region of immense development. He rises 



SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 033 



to speak. His voice, though not finely modulated, is pow- 
erful ; his style of language plain, energetic, and full of 
point, — such a style as Cobbet used to write, and which, 
when employed as a medium for the conveyance of thoughts 
of large volume, is perhaps of all kinds of style the most 
influential. He is evidently a master of reason ; and there 
runs through the lighter portions of his speech a vein of 
homely, racy humor, very quiet, but very effective. That 
speaker is Andrew Gray, of Perth, one of the vigorous and 
original minds which the demands of the present struggle 
have called from comparative obscurity into the contro- 
versial arena, full in the view of the country. Mr. Gray's 
admirable pamphlet, " The Present Conflict," took the lead, 
we believe, of all the publications of which the unhappy 
collision between the civil and ecclesiastical courts has 
been the occasion ; and it must be regarded surely as no 
slight proof of the judgment of the man, that of all the 
positions he then took up, not one has since been aban- 
doned. He marked out the Torres Vedras of the ques- 
tion, and the lines have not yet been forced. 

But we find we must run hurriedly over a few of the 
remaining characters, indicating, as we pass, rather the 
subject of a portrait than attempting to draw one. That 
pale, thin, middle-sized man in black, with the prominent 
features and thoughtful air, is Mr. Charles J. Brown, of 
Edinburgh, — a man of an acute and nicely logical mind, 
and inferior as a theologian to perhaps no minister in the 
Church of Scotland. The gentleman beside him, with the 
snow-white hair, ample forehead, and dark eyebrows, is 
Dr. Thomas Brown, of Glasgow, — one of the most re- 
spected clergymen in the kingdom, — a man who succeeded 
Dr. Chalmers in one of his city charges, and yet preserved 
•the congregation entire ; and who, at an age not far re- 
moved from the threescore and ten, preserves all the 
intellectual freshness and vigor of his youth. The thin, 
handsome, erect, elderly man beside the moderator's chair, 
with the slender ebony cane in his hand, is Dr. Makellar, 



334 SKETCHES OF THE GENEKAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 



the moderator of last Assembly, — a gentleman chosen to 
the office from the general weight of his character, and the 
trust reposed in him by the Church, as one in whom, in 
times of difficulty and trial, the most thorough confidence 
could be placed. There is a very fair representation of the 
magistracy of the country on these benches. The Church, 
if in a state of rebellion, has certainly very singular abet- 
tors. That gentlemanly man in black, rather below the 
middle size, is Sir James Forrest, of Comiston, Lord Pro- 
vost of Edinburgh. The taller man, a few seats away, is 
the ex-Provost of Glasgow. The eminently handsome, well- 
built man, of at least six feet, who has just taken his place 
in the front seat, is the Sheriff of Fife. The aristocracy 
have also their representatives ; and well would it be for 
the country if the average character of the class stood as 
high in all that regards the truly good and honorable as in 
the sample which these benches furnish. The lawyers, too, 
muster strong; and so we deem it an interesting feature 
of the collision to find so many of these taking their stand 
with the Church, in determined opposition to the decisions 
of the civil court, — holding, as we do, that, were the case 
a fairly balanced one, the professional bias would have 
inclined them all the other way. Our readers cannot fail 
to remember that such was very strikingly the case in the 
collision which took place last year between the House of 
Commons and the Court of Queen's Bench. Almost all 
the lawyers of England declared on the side of the court. 

But we have exhausted our space in passing over a few 
of the better known names of the party. The list contains 
many others which we might pronounce with but small 
chance of recognition on the part of the reader, — the 
names of humble laborers in the gospel, of whom the 
world knows little, but whose ministry God has blessed 
for the conversion of souls, and who, in their obscure, 
though surely not unimportant spheres of usefulness, are 
loved and honored as the instruments of much good. It 
would be a dark day for Scotland that would see them 



SCOTTISH LAWYERS: THEIR TWO CLASSES. 335 



ejected from their charges, and strangers thrust into their 
places, — shepherds whose voices the flocks would not 
hear, and whose unblest footsteps they would fear to fol- 
low. Thus melancholy, however, must be the result, if 
the civil court succeed in maintaining its place within the 
territory which it has so unhappily invaded. The Church 
cannot recede. She has marshalled her front of defence 
on the last rood of ground which she can conscientiously 
occupy, either with respect to the spiritual welfare of her 
people or the honor of her Divine Master. There remains 
for her no back-ground space on which to form within the 
pale of the Establishment. She has -already arrived at her 
last barrier. 



SCOTTISH LAWYERS: THEIR TWO CLASSES. 

Saddletree, in the " Heart of Mid-Lothian," is made 
to exclaim, in astonishment, " Who ever heard of a lawyer 
that would suffer for any one religion or other ! " There 
may be humor in the joke, but certainly no truth. Some 
of the most eminently religious men which either this or 
the sister country ever produced have been distinguished 
members of the legal profession. Sir Matthew Hale, not 
more eminent for his unbending rectitude as a judge than 
for the profundity of his attainments as a lawyer, cultivated 
a close walk w T ith God; and we know not in the wdiole 
round of English theology a more thoroughly spiritual 
composition than his discourse on the Knowledge of Christ 
Crucified. Among his contemporaries of the legal profes- 
sion in our own country we reckon one of our martyrs, 
Archibald Johnstone, Lord Warriston. The early half of 
the following century had likewise its lawyers of eminent 
piety. The writings of Lord President Forbes show that 
the ablest jurist of his age or country was also one of its 
best and most devout men. His predecessor, Lord Presi- 



336 SCOTTISH LAWYERS : THEIR TWO CLASSES. 



dent Dundas, was also a man of personal piety. As the 
century advanced, however, that night of spiritual dark- 
ness which had sunk so gloomily over the Scottish Church 
involved the Scottish bar in a gloom at least equally deep, 
and still more palpably haunted by the gross and obscene 
shapes which come abroad at such seasons. There are 
writers of the present day who, though not at all particu- 
larly squeamish regarding what and how they describe, 
can do little more than hint at the grossnesses and de- 
baucheries which had come to characterize our Scottish 
lawyers of this period. Lockhart, in his " Life of Burns," 
speaks of their " tavern scenes of audacious hilarity," and 
but insinuates the rest. Heron, who must have known of 
the matter from more than hearsay, attributes the ultimate 
ruin of the poor poet to the influence of their example. 
There still survive traditional anecdotes and bon mots of 
the class, that, like plague-spots on the walls of a building, 
serve to show how tainted the atmosphere must have been, 
and how deep the infection. We find inklings, too, to the 
same effect in the early life of Scott, — more than mere 
hints of great intemperance, joined to great profanity. 
The Faculty of this period, though it seems to have had 
marvellously few Christians, had, notwithstanding, its many 
elders; and, as might be anticipated, we discover a fierce 
extreme of opinion on religious subjects in almost every 
instance in which they registered their views in our church 
courts, — a bitterness of hostility to the gospel truly won- 
derful. In the famous debate on missions (1796), the cler- 
ical leaders of Moderatism were content merely, as in the 
case of Mr. Hamilton, of Gladsmuir, to denounce the gospel 
as something so immoral and bad, that, if communicated 
to the heathen, it could not fail of destroying their native 
virtue ; or, as in the case of Principal Hill, to oppose the 
scheme of sending it out of the country, sheerly from a 
fear lest the missionaries, when they got beyond the reach 
of the law, should quarrel on points of speculative divin- 
ity, and cut one another's throats. The lawyers who 



SCOTTISH LAWYERS: THEIR TWO CLASSES. 337 



mingled in the debate took higher ground ; and it is a fact 
worth noticing, that at least one of these lawyers sits on 
the bench in the j)resent day. 1 The divines only argued 
that missionary societies should not be encouraged because 
they were in the main mischievous and foolish. The 
lawyer who is now a magistrate proposed that they should 
be dealt with as bands of conspirators leagued against the 
state. We need hardly add that he forms one of the 
majority who have decided against the Church. 

A change, however, came over the Scottish bar. The 
irreligion of the class had become well-nigh universal, 
when, to employ the language of the " Presbyterian Re- 
view," "through the influence of a revival, proceeding 
entirely from within, converts to Christianity were raised 
up from among the ranks of the careless, the worldly, and 
the infidel." Lawyers at least not inferior in talent and 
accomplishment to any of their contemporaries began to 
walk professedly by the light of revelation, and to illus- 
trate, by the purity of their lives, the excellence of what 
they professed; and a return to the old beliefs heralded, 
in almost every instance, a return to the old Presbyterian 
views of Church government. The bar during the darker 
period had produced many advocates of popular rights, 
some of them eminently able men ; but the rights they 
asserted were political, not religious ; for while its earlier 
whigs had been cast, if we may so express ourselves, into 
the Scottish Presbyterian mould of their country, its whigs 
of the middle period had been mere irreligious English- 
men. The most zealous protester against the first act of 
intrusion perpetrated in Scotland under the infamous law 
of Bolingbroke was Duncan Forbes : his zeal was that of 
the whig grafted on the Christian. The pointed remon- 
strance directed against patronage by the General Assem- 
bly about the time of the Secession was drawn up by Lord 
President Dundas. And the authorship of the period, as 
connected with the bar, bore a similar stamp. Lord Dreg- 



l Lord President Boyle. 

29 



338 SCOTTISH lawyers: their two classes. 



horn's pamphlet against patronage is one of perhaps the 
ablest which has yet appeared on the subject. Though no 
religious man himself, he had eminently pious relatives; 
and thus, while he, as it were, saw the question with his 
own eyes, he seems to have felt regarding it with their 
feelings. Another able pamphlet of the time, written in 
the same track, was the composition of a second lawyer, 
Crosbie, the Councillor Pleydell of "Guy Mannering," — 
the acute, conscientious, warm-hearted Pleydell, who never 
thought other than justly, and whose feelings were ever 
as generous as his reasonings were sound. He, too, was a 
determined opponent of patronage. But when lawyers 
ceased to be religious, patronage ceased to be felt as a 
grievance, and their whiggism took exclusively a secular 
form. Whatever might be their ideas, too, regarding in- 
dependence of every other kind, of spiritual independence 
they had none. It was not until the old beliefs were 
revived among them — the beliefs held by Forbes and 
Dunclas, and for the maintenance of which Warriston had 
died — that the old principles came to be again asserted. 
And hence, that most important portion of the Church 
party in the present struggle drawn from the ranks of the 
legal profession. 

It would, however, be saying a great deal too little were 
Ave to say that, while this religious section of the Faculty 
are zealous in behalf of the Church, the portion whose 
character has undergone no change are merely indifferent 
to it. There is a bitter hostility evinced. The times in 
which a mechanic could fight for the honor of his craft are 
over, but not the times in which a lawyer can contend for. 
the jurisdiction of his court. There is a tangibility, too, 
about the claims of the Court of Session, in the present 
instance, which, to a man conversant with the tangible 
only, seems to have peculiar force. They relate to the seen 
and temporal, — to things which are the objects of his own 
belief; whereas the things to which the claims of the 
antagonist court chiefly refer are but the objects of the 



THE NEW POLICY: EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 339 



beliefs of other men. There is a strange confounding, too 
(a common mistake among lawyers), of the right with 
what they deem the enacted. There is, withal, a blind, 
but too natural dislike of the spiritual element, which, 
having not seen, they yet hate. And hence the hostility 
of this class. They are by much more numerous than the 
other; but, in at least a moral and religious point of view, 
the hostility of the many weighs immensely less than the 
support and friendship of the few. 



THE NEW POLICY: EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 

" "We have now but one safe course of tactics left us," 
said a shrewd divine of the unpopular party, a member of 
the General Assembly of last year, — " we have now but 
one safe course of tactics left us : we must unite evangel- 
ical preaching to the Moderate policy." He spoke to only 
a small knot of friends, but the remark has got abroad. 
Unimportant as it may seem, it is more pregnant with 
meaning than half the speeches of his party ; and we are 
much mistaken if in the present juncture the Church has 
not more to fear from the course which it recommends 
than from the Protest of the Rev. Dr. James Bryce, late 
of Calcutta, or the Declaration of the Rev. Mr. James 
Grant, still of Leith. 

None but a bigot will dare restrict the piety of Chris' 
tend om to his own Church or his own party ; but there is 
no bigotry in affirming that the piety of almost every 
Church and sect has its own peculiar type. The inopera- 
tive, mystic piety of Rome, as illustrated in Fenelon and 
Madame Guyon, was very dissimilar in aspect to the manly, 
active, spirit-stirring piety of the Puritanism of England, 
as illustrated in its Calamys, Baxters, and other worthies 
of the times of the Commonwealth. The piety of the 
Scoto-Episcopal type, as illustrated in Leighton, with its 



340 THE NEW POLICY: EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 

quiet tolerance of all impurity and all oppression, was 
assuredly a very different thing in appearance from the 
stern covenanting piety of Presbyterian Scotland, as illus- 
trated in Melville and Henderson, with its noble declara- 
tion of eternal warfare against all abuse and all tyranny. 
The basis of Christian principle was the same in each. 
We have as little doubt of the vital Christianity of Madame 
Guyon as of that of Richard Baxter himself ; and we be- 
lieve Leighton to have been as sincerely pious as Hender- 
son. But while the foundations were the same, the super- 
structures were different. In the language of the inspired 
volume, "hay and stubble," as certainly as "gold and 
silver," may be piled on the rock which human hand has 
not laid. The piety of every Christian Church has its 
own type ; and the peculiar and well-marked type of the 
piety of Presbyterian Scotland is utterly at variance with 
the policy of Moderatism. If there be any one trait 
stamped more legibly on the character of the piety of our 
Church than another, it is the regard which she has ever 
manifested for the will of her Christian people in the for- 
mation of the pastoral tie. If any one great principle 
stand out prominently in her history as the main object 
of her severe and long-protracted contendings, it is the 
principle which imperatively demands that she take her 
spiritual law from only her spiritual Lord, and pay respect 
in all things which pertain to eternity only to Him by 
whom the "praises" of "eternity are inhabited." It will 
prove by no means very easy to reconcile, within the Scot- 
tish Church, Evangelical doctrine with Moderate policy. 
The associations of three centuries conspire to render the 
coalition a monstrous one. True, in a few extreme cases, 
such a coalition seems already to exist ; but the Evangelism 
in these cases will be found to be either Evangelism in a 
deplorably false position, or Evangelism of a radically 
extrinsic type. In the belief, however, that the Church 
may be in some little danger at present from the policy 
recommended by the Moderate divine, we would fain call 



THE NEW POLICY: EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 841 



the attention of our readers to the consideration of the 
two classes of persons in whom the coalition which he 
proposed seems actually effected. 

We would first remark, that a very minute portion of 
the Evangelism of the Scottish Establisnment is Evangel- 
ism of the Seoto-Episcopal type. We have our sighers 
after an "audible response" from the congregation, — men 
who would deem it no very great hardship to be compelled 
to use the sign of the cross in baptism, and who are such 
sticklers for the existence of a certain mysterious virtue 
in the rite of ordination, derived somehow, by descent 
ceremonial, from the times of the apostles, that the Pusey- 
ites of England openly challenge them, in their leading- 
organs, as worthy brethren lucklessly misplaced. It is no 
marvel to find the Evangelism of such men dissociated 
from at least the non-intrusion doctrine. All such have in 
them the germ of the true priest. They must of necessity 
regard every clergyman, however secular in his personal 
character, as possessed of something sacred which the people 
want. He is at least an ordained brother ; he is vested in 
the priestly office, and the priestly office is a high and holy 
thing; and if ordination be so good a matter in the indi- 
vidual, what must not multiplied ordinations be in the 
ecclesiastical court? What weight can the voice of a 
parish have, compared with the judgment of a presbytery, 
— the assent or non-assent of a mass of the profane, unor- 
dained lay, set off against the solemn decision of a sacred 
conglomeration of the ordained ecclesiastical? Hence, 
too, much of that monstrous tolerance of evil in the Church 
which is peculiar to the Evangelism of this type. Arch- 
bishop Leighton and Archbishop Sharpe were dignitaries 
of the same Church at the same time. — u brothers in God." 
All that is sacred in ordination, according to the Puseyite 
code, could have been derived from Pope Alexander III., 
though foul with incest and red with murder, or from 
Cardinal Beaton, after he had let Mrs. Marion Ogilvy out 
through the castle postern. Is it from a consideration of 

29* 



342 THE NEW policy: evangelical moderates. 



this kind that some of our very few Scoto-Episcopal Pres- 
byterians can open their pulpits, though they themselves 
preach only the gospel, to brethren who neither preach it 
themselves, nor yet know it, except through the instinct 
by which they hate it when preached by others ! — or that 
they can make common cause in the present struggle with 
a party tolerant of all abuses, and infamous for all ? They 
are a class from whom the people of Scotland have some- 
what to fear, and nothing to hope. They gild, by their 
purity of character, the feculent grossness of their party, 
as the mountebanks of the last age used to gild their pills. 
They have the merit of doing their duty in their own 
parishes, and of pursuing a course of policy which goes 
far to secure that duty be not done in any other parish 
besides, — affecting all the time to confine their interest as 
ecclesiastics each to his own little sphere. We are of the 
opinion that the moral of Archbishop Leighton's life has 
never yet been fully read, and that it addresses itself pow- 
erfully to this class. Our readers must have heard of the 
happy reply attributed to him, when, ere his final decision 
in favor of Episcopacy, he was asked, in a phraseology 
common to the period, whether he did not " preach to the 
times ? " — " When so many preach to the times," said 
Leighton, " surely one solitary divine may be forgiven 
should he preach for eternity." What was the result, as 
shown in the history of his life? In jailing to preach to 
the times, — in failing, in other words, to assert the great 
principles for which Christ's people were then contending, 
and for which his father had suffered, — he failed also, 
palpably, utterly, lamentably, to preach for eternity. Ex- 
cept for his writings, — and these had no connection what- 
ever with his unhappy choice, — never was there a more 
profitless life. His piety — and who can doubt its depth 
or fervency ? — was neutralized by his position. He saw 
evil triumphing in his own party, and good depressed and 
persecuted in the antagonist one ; and at length, quitting 
his ofiice in despair, — for the fruits of all his labor had 



THE NEW POLICY : EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 343 

been but disappointment, and worse, — he retired into 
private life, and died in obscurity. His story has not yet 
been written with an eye to its true meaning. 

So much for our Scottish Evangelism of the radically 
extrinsic type. Its Evangelism of an opposite kind, in a 
false position, though the amount be fortunately very 
small, — so small that our readers could run over all its 
representatives on fewer than half their fingers, — is a still 
more deplorable object. Its unseemly, and surely most 
unenviable and uneasy position, will be found to have 
originated entirely in some peculiarity of personal charac- 
ter. There is a class of peculiarities which arise from 
overweening conceit, and which are of all human frailties 
the most irresistibly ludicrous. Comedy has gleaned a 
rich harvest from among them in the past, and every age 
and every locality produce their fresh supply. There is a 
period of life — the period between boyhood and early 
youth, the adolescent stage of human existence — when 
it is natural for almost all to over-estimate themselves; 
and perhaps this is not less necessary than natural. The 
confidence felt is a moving power to urge the aspirant 
upward and onward in his toilsome career. But the 
ability of forming a juster estimate of himself comes as he 
proceeds. He feels that his powers have their limits; 
that there is much which he cannot perform at all, and 
much in which he is excelled by others ; and, as years 
mature his understanding, and difficulties test his strength, 
he learns to think soberly and justly of himself. Such is 
the ordinary course. Minds there are, however, in which 
the overweening confidence of adolescence lasts all life 
long, — men of the ordinary stature, who mistake them- 
selves somehow for giants, and who cannot be convinced, 
frame the argument as we may, that they are not looking 
down on all their fellows. It is a fact which we shall 
scarce need to prove to at least one-half our readers, that 
by much the greater part of the falsely placed Evangelism 
of the Church has been fixed in its miserable attitude by 



344 THE new policy: evangelical moderates. 



this ludicrous but not the less lamentable weakness; that 
the few men now opposed to the measures of their breth- 
ren, but who not many years ago, some of them not many 
months ago, were zealous beyond measure in a similar 
track, are men whose overweening conceit rendered them 
standing jests among the lighter spirits of their several 
districts, and for whose laughable vanities the graver class, 
who deemed them good but weak men, found it no easy 
matter to apologize. 

Let us imagine a clergyman of no more than the ordi- 
nary calibre snugly placed in a country parish, — indolent 
but respectable, — remarkable for being emphatic in his 
commonplaces, and for having nothing else to be emphatic 
in, — zealous above all his brethren in his denunciations 
against patronage, and apt to be particularly severe on 
some of the best of them, just because their denunciations 
were less frequent and less loud than his own ; — let us, 
we say, imagine such a person dreaming on his sofa that 
he was decidedly one of the first men, if not, indeed, the 
very first man, in the Church. Let us imagine him dis- 
covering that he had a very large head, and that it required 
a very large hat. Let us imagine him measuring and re- 
measuring, and, in short, finding out that he was a singu- 
larly great man, and then fully resolving on serving himself 
heir to Dr. Andrew Thomson in the leadership of the 
Church. Let us further imagine him throwing up his 
parish with this view, and accepting of a chapel in a large 
town. Of course, to a person like him the way to the 
first places in the Establishment could not be other than 
open. Let us imagine him taking every opportunity of 
speaking in the inferior church courts, — making long 
speeches on great questions because they were important, 
and long speeches on little questions because it was inge- 
nious to show how much could be made out of them. Let 
us imagine him successful in rendering himself a very sad 
bore, and a very grievous hindrance to all manner of busi- 
ness, with no one to listen to his speeches or to reply to 



THE NEW POLICY: EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 345 

them, — with a drowsy moderator in front of him, and 
sleeping reporters behind. Let us then imagine him turn- 
ing to the press, big as ever with his own importance, and 
magnanimously resolved on confounding the sleepers by an 
eloquent appeal to an impartial public. Let us imagine 
him well-nigh realizing the story of the Welsh curate in 
Joe Miller, who, in printing a sermon, requested the book- 
seller to throw off as many copies as there were families in 
the united kingdom ; but, when urging on his publisher a 
second edition, let us imagine almost the whole of the first 
returning unsold. Finally, let us imagine him concluding 
that half the public and two-thirds of the Church had 
entered into a conspiracy to eclipse his bright genius, 
— thoroughly convinced as ever of his clear claim to the 
leadership, — jealous of Dr. Chalmers, — certain that our 
Grays, Cunninghams, Candlishes, and Dunlops, are but 
vain, light men, with hats immensely smaller than his 
own, — publishing a dull, bulky pamphlet, crammed with 
borrowed thoughts and original vituperation, in the hope 
of settling the present controversy and crushing his old 
friends, and, in short, making common cause with Mod- 
eratism, — and all this in the evangelical garb. Our 
draught may be but a mere fancy sketch; but if it be 
otherwise, has the Church any very great cause to regret 
the opposition of such a man ? 

Let us imagine yet another case. Let us conceive, if 
we can, a man vain to a proverb, equally convinced of his 
oratorical powers with the other, and of his natural right 
to be a leader in the Church. Let us imagine him ever 
involved, on the score of personal dignity, in controversies 
the most ludicrously small, — engaged, for instance, heart, 
soul, and spirit, in asserting, to the confusion of all and 
sundry, that his newly erected church should be called the 
first church of the town to which it belongs. Let us 
imagine him, confident of his own unparalleled powers, 
refusing his pulpit to a man such as Dr. Andrew Thom- 
son. Our Saviour taught more than good manners when 



346 THE NEW POLICY: EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 



he instructed his followers to choose the humbler places 
when they sat at feasts; let us imagine the injunction 
reversed by the individual whose character we describe. 
While yet a young man, let us imagine him pressing him- 
self forward, all unbidden, in our venerable Assembly, 
amid the aged fathers of the Church. Let us imagine him 
engaged in endless speeches that could not be listened to, 
and grown a thorough master of that particular species of 
fine speaking which rejoices in supernumerary adjectives. 
But though thus forward and vain, let us conceive of him 
also as a zealous assertor of the original principles of Scot- 
tish presbytery, — as going along with the Church in all 
her decisions, — as committing himself, in reported speeches 
and printed sermons, to all her principles, — as publicly 
recognizing her leaders as men of God, — as, in short, a 
foot-soldier in the very vanguard of the party, and only 
nothing more because, despite of his own estimate, nature 
had denied the necessary power. Imagine him either 
piqued to find it so, or that a dangerous crisis has at length 
come, and stealing meanly away by a side-path, of which, 
of the hundreds present, only one other individual could 
avail himself, and that one, by his own confession, not a 
member of the Evangelical party. But our sketch is not 
yet completed. Imagine the subject of it taking his 
place, not many months subsequent, at a political dinner, 
and rising, after one of the bitterest Intrusionists in Scot- 
land, to denounce the very party for whom he had so long . 
spoken and written, whose principles he had professed, and 
whose determinations he had defended, as a party with 
whom he had " no sympathy," and who were but urging 
the fall of the Establishment " in the desperation of human 
pride" Was it not enough that he had saved himself? 
Surely a very little magnanimity might have enabled him 
to spurn the commonest trick of the renegade. This, too, 
may be but a fancy sketch ; but if it be otherwise, we again 
ask, has the Church any very great cause to regret the 
opposition of such a man ? 



moderatism: some oe its better classes. 347 



It is scarce necessary to remark in connection with such 
men, and especially the first, that it is one of the many 
advantages of our Presbyterian Church that every man 
finds his true level in it. We have our leading bishops, 
but they are all bishops of Heaven's making. It is through 
no indirect or unworthy influence that the ablest men take 
the first place in our Assemblies, and that character asserts 
its power there with all the force of a natural law. This, 
however, is not the point. We have described two classes 
who either already unite, or are on the eve of uniting, the 
doctrines of Evangelism to the Moderate policy. Their 
joint numbers would scarce amount to half a score; but 
much has been made of their characters in the present 
controversy, especially of those of the first class ; and the 
Church's worst enemies have copiously quoted and enthu- 
siastically cheered the pamphlets and speeches of the 
others. We would say to the people, Beware of all of the 
Moderate party who are on the eve of joining them. 



MODERATISM: SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 

Let us suppose a young man, brought up in all the 
deadness of Moderate principles from his very childhood, 
naturally quiet and amiable, and of a soft, retiring disposi- 
tion. Let us suppose him marked out by his friends for 
the Church, just as they might have marked him out for 
physic or the law, and he himself, with little inclination 
one way or another, acquiescently pursuing the necessary 
studies. Let us suppose him at length settled in a parish, 

— respectable in acquirement, unexceptionable in conduct, 
and possessed, as a clergyman, of that sort of negative 
character which has formed a starting-point to thousands, 

— a starting-point, in their upward career, to some who 
have subsequently become at once props and ornaments 
of the Church, — a starting-point to others in their course 



348 MODERATISM : SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 



downwards to a level of degradation too low to be reached 
by any except scandalous and unfaithful ministers. Let 
us imagine him at this stage with all his predilections in 
favor of the Moderate policy, the whole course of his 
education bearing full upon it, and himself as yet unquali- 
fied to understand anything higher, though, through the 
influence of a temper naturally quiet and retiring, little 
disposed to take a prominent part in church courts. 

Let us next imagine a silent but very wonderful change 
taking place in his character. Let us imagine the breath 
of a living Spirit kindling up into light and heat the 
hitherto dead embers of his painfully gathered though but 
inadequately understood theology. " The wind bloweth 
as it listeth ;" nor can we say why, in the stillness of the 
calm, the sudden breeze should rise at times in the recesses 
of some solitary valley, and heap together and carry up- 
wards in its eddies the hitherto unseen and scattered foli- 
age. Suppose, however, the change not restricted to the 
clergyman whom we describe. Let us imagine it also 
extended to many of his people, — a singular reformation 
taking place among them, — open immoralities suppressed, 
and an anxious concern awakened in hundreds together 
regarding the realities of the unseen world. Let us ima- 
gine their minister, thoroughly impressed and in earnest, 
entering on a course of duty very different from the skel- 
eton round which he had at first proposed to himself, — no 
longer restricting himself to even Sabbath-day ministra- 
tions, — not even restricting himself to days at all, but 
atrociously guilty of the very abomination of his party, — 
preachings by night; guilty even, according to Rowland 
Hill, of being an instrument in the " conversion of souls at 
unseasonable hours." And yet we can imagine such a man, 
thus zealous and sincere, but thus retiring also in his habits, 
and little disposed to take an active part in church courts, 
remaining nominally, and for a brief transition period at 
least, in the ranks of Moderatism. His doctrines can be 
no longer the doctrines of his party; his policy, were he 



MODERATISM : SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 349 

called on to act, could be quite as little their policy. It 
would be as impossible for him to obtrude a hireling, igno- 
rant of God and religion, on a parish such as his own, as it 
would be for him to preach a gospel that had not Christ in 
it. But, though impelled to preach, he is not compelled 
to act. The prejudices of his education have still their 
hold of him; and so, nominally at least, he still ranks on 
the side of Moderatism. Would that the party had many 
such ! In the first place, they might do it good ; in the 
second, it is scarce possible, in the nature of things, that it 
could retain them long. It is not on one occasion only 
that Evangelism has drawn even her leaders from the 
ranks of the opposition. Henderson had but to be con- 
verted, and the timeserver and the intrusionist became the 
first man of Scotland in forwarding the work of the sec- 
ond Reformation. . 

There is another though less decided class whom it is 
also but justice to mention. The increase of Evangelism 
in the country has excited much bitter hostility and much 
determined opposition. There are both ministers and 
elders in the Church of Scotland, and especially the latter, 
whose entire exertions in their official capacity have been 
exertions against this principle and its workings. Were 
we to strike out of their catalogue of doings and sayings 
all they have done and said against missions, all they have 
spoken and written against revivals, all their canvassings 
and pamphleteering against church extension, all their 
efforts, secret and open, to secure the subjection of the 
spiritual to the secular power, all their severe and pro- 
tracted labors to open our parishes to the intrusion of 
Youngs and Edwardses, and to show that it should be so, 
— were we to denude them of their deeds of this and a 
similar character, we would leave them nothing to connect 
them, even incidentally, with vital Christianity. The whole 
of their acts that have borne on religion in any way have 
been acts in the opposition. But the party has another 
and better class, — men brought up Moderates, and who 

30 



350 MODERATISM : SOME OP ITS BETTER CLASSES. 

still record their votes on the Moderate side, — who are 
by no means devoid of the feeling that the standard of 
duty is unequivocally an Evangelical standard. They are 
men in most instances pretty far advanced in life, by no 
means devoid of conscience, nor yet unimpressed by the 
truths of revelation ; and who, after having preached 
Moderatism long enough to discover that it is but of very 
little use, have been groping doubtfully, and in much dark- 
ness and feebleness, after a " more excellent way." Instead 
of opposing the schemes of the Church, some of the class 
have done their little all to help them. They have been 
stirred up, partly through a growing seriousness, and partly 
by the example of some of their neighbors of the popular 
party, to more diligence than they were wont to exercise in 
their parochial labors; and if little fruit has been produced, 
there has been at least a desire awakened for its produc- 
tion. They at least respect Evangelism. "Be thankful," 
said one of the class, an aged and respectable man, to some 
young ministers, his co-presbyters, — " be thankful for the 
time in which you have come into the Church. When we 
entered it, there was less light and lower views of duty." 
Of this section of Moderatism we say just what we have 
said of the other, Would that it were a more numerous 
one ! It is at least convinced of a truth, which men such 
as Dr. James Bryce will be slow to learn, — the truth that 
Evangelism is the vital principle of Presbytery, — that it 
could have no life without it as a Church, and no stability 
without it as an Establishment. 

It is no matter of regret, we repeat, that Moderatism 
should have its better classes. The true matter of regret 
respecting it is, that the individuals of which those classes 
are composed should be so very few. The party has its 
statistics, — its unquestionable and unquestioned tabular 
exhibitions of character; and in these we unfortunately 
find its average modicum of usefulness fixed exceedingly 
low. Good character is a good thing, however ; and though 
an over-large supply of it might render a schism in the 



MODERATISM : SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 351 



party scarcely less inevitable, in the event of any ill-advised 
perseverance in the course chalked out by the protesters 
of the Commission, than that course would render inevitable 
a schism in the Church itself, still the party love to avail 
themselves of the respectability which it imparts. It is 
marvellous how often single names are referred to, and 
how the character of one is made to serve for a hundred. 
We have been reminded of the fact, we know not how 
often, by an old, and, we are afraid, not very pointed* story, 
told us by an aged relative, some five and twenty years 
ago. At a time shortly after the old pious race of Scotch 
sailors described by Peter Walker had worn out, and long 
ere seamen's chapels and Methodism had done aught to 
raise a serious race in their stead, our sailors were a decid- 
edly irreligious class. Honest old John Menzies, of Aber- 
deen, however, who lived at this time, was not only one 
of the bravest and most skilful seamen connected with the 
port, but also one of the most truly pious men of the city. 
Almost every one knew and respected John Menzies. A 
party of very decent women had met at Leith, and the 
conversation turned, among other things, on the irreligion 
of sailors. "Ah ! poor fellows," said one of the women, " we 
should not judge over rashly; there are surely good men 
among them. For my own part, I can say that one of the 
very best men I know is a sailor." — "That, cummer, may 
well be," said another woman ; "I also know a sailor who 
is the worthiest man alive." — "And I, too," said a third, 
"know a sailor who has very few equals." This, of course, 
looked remarkably well ; three Christian sailors found on 
so slight a survey, it was hard to say how long the list 
might become. Unluckily, however, the women came to 
compare notes, and discovered, in consequence, that their 
three super-excellent sailors just resolved themselves into 
honest old John Menzies, of Aberdeen. 



352 prayer: the true and the counterfeit. 

* 



PRAYER: THE TRUE AND THE COUNTERFEIT. 

"It has been long held by the people of Scotland, that 
prayers laboriously polished in the study ere repeated by 
rote in the pulpit, — fine addresses to Deity smoothed up 
with the same small care which sonneteers bestow on odes 
to their mistresses' eyebrows, — are in reality very poor 
sort of things." We said so a paper or two ago ; but the 
justice of the reflection has been challenged. We hold 
that it has its foundation, not in prejudice, but in truth. 

A Scotch Highlander, who served in the first disastrous 
war with the American colonies, was brought one evening 
before his commanding officer, charged with the capital 
offence of being in communication with the enemy. The 
charge could not well be preferred at a more dangerous 
time. Only a few weeks had passed since the execution 
of Major Andre; and the indignation of the British, exas- 
perated almost to madness by the event, had not yet cooled 
down. There was, however, no direct proof agaiust the 
Highlander. He had been seen in the gray of the twilight 
stealing from out a clump of underwood that bordered on 
one of the huge forests which at that period covered by 
much the greater part of the United Provinces, and which, 
in the immediate neighborhood of the British, swarmed 
with the troops of Washington. All the rest was mere 
inference and conjecture. The poor man's defence was 
summed up in a few words : he had stolen away from his 
fellows, he said, to spend an hour in private prayer. " Have 
you been in the habit of spending hours in private prayer?" 
sternly asked the officer, himself a Scotchman and a Pres- 
byterian. The Highlander replied in the affirmative. 
" Then," said the other, drawing out his watch, " never in 
all your life had you more need of prayer than now ; kneel 
down, sir, and pray aloud, that we may all hear you." The 
Highlander, in the expectation of instant death, knelt 



prayer: the true and the counterfeit. 353 



down. His prayer was that of one long acquainted with 
the appropriate language in which the Christian addresses 
his God. It breathed of imminent peril, and earnestly 
implored the divine interposition in the threatened danger, 
— the help of Him who, in times of extremity, is strong 
to deliver. It exhibited, in short, a man who, thoroughly 
conversant with the scheme of redemption, and fully im- 
pressed with the necessity of a personal interest in the 
advantages which it secures, had made the business of 
salvation the work of many a solitary hour, and had, in 
consequence, acquired much fluency in expressing all his 
various wants as they occurred, and his thoughts and 
wishes as they arose. " You may go, sir," said the officer, 
as he concluded : " you have, I dare say, not been in cor- 
respondence with the enemy to-night. His statement," he 
continued, addressing himself to the other officers, "is, I 
doubt not, perfectly correct. No one could have prayed so 
without a long apprenticeship ; the fellows who have never 
attended drill always get on ill at review." 

Now, we are of opinion that the commanding officer 
evinced very considerable shrewdness in this instance. We 
learn to make our common every-day language a ready 
medium of communicating all our various thoughts and 
feelings, just because it is our common every-day language, 
— just because, through constant habit, we come so inti- 
mately to associate the arbitrary signs with the ideas which 
they represent, that at length, ceasing to mark their dis- 
tinct existence as signs, they become identical with the 
thoughts of which they were at first but the instruments. 
There is surely no fanaticism in arguing after this fashion ; 
nor was the Scotch officer in any degree a fanatic, though 
he carried the principle a little further. He argued that 
the men with whom prayer is a habit acquire the language 
of prayer; and it was on this principle that he tested the 
suspected Highlander. The mechanic and the tradesman 
learn to wield their technicalities — so stiff and unmanage- 
able to all but themselves — with as much ease as if they 

30* 



354 prayer: the true and the counterfeit. 



were the commonest vocables of the language. The vo- 
cabularies of chemistry and the mathematics, of geology 
and botany, however difficult and repulsive to others, never 
encumber the chemist or the mathematician, the geologist 
or the botanist; they serve, on the contrary, to impart 
clearness to their thinking and fluency to their reasonings. 
But no one ever mastered these vocabularies without much 
practice and study ; and, in like manner, the closet has its 
vocabulary, which it also requires practice and study to 
master. In the e very-day communications which the 
Christian holds with his God, there are other thoughts 
conveyed, and other feelings expressed, than those which 
he employs in his every-day converse with his fellows. 
The recesses of the internal man are laid open ; the bias 
to evil, though manifested in but embryo imaginings and 
hidden moods, is confessed and deplored in language varied 
according to the character of the imagination or the com- 
plexion of the mood ; there are implorations for assistance 
against enemies felt, though invisible, and the nature of 
whose ever-varying assaults is suggestive of the ever-vary- 
ing petition. The circumstance, too, that it is God who is 
addressed, gives a peculiarity to the style. We walk erect 
in the presence of our fellows ; and as it is the privilege 
of our species to walk erect, shame to the low and mean 
natures that do otherwise ! But is there any one who can 
prostrate himself before his Maker in a humility too pro- 
found ? All revelation, too, with its vast breadth of mean- 
ing, — that breadth which, the more we examine it, expands 
the more, — is composed of but the elements, the materials 
of prayer; and an intercourse with God for a thousand 
lifetimes united would not suffice to employ them all. 
Prayer is so mighty an instrument that no one ever 
thoroughly mastered all its keys. They sweep along the 
infinite scale of man's wants and of God's goodness. But, 
comparatively at least, this instrument has been mastered ; 
it is mastered to a considerable degree by every converted 
man. He acquires the vocabulary of the closet as the 



prayer: the true and the counterfeit. 355 

proper language of the state of which he has become a 
free denizen, and his fellow-citizens recognize it as their 
common tongue. The Scotch officer was not altogether 
ignorant of it ; and to the positive existence *of such a 
language the anecdote of his experiment on the Highlander 
owes its point. 

To the Christian possessed of the language of the closet 
we very decidedly oppose the mere Moderate, by whom 
that language has not been acquired. Kay, we go further. 
We affirm that the ability of recognizing this language 
through that sympathy which soul holds with soul, and 
that perception through which experience recognizes its 
kindred experience, are elements, and no unimportant 
ones, of the present controversy. We would deem a 
Christian people fully justified in rejecting every clergy- 
man in whose prayers they did not recognize this language. 
We know there are good men who write their prayers. 
We are aware that Knox wrote prayers for the rude and 
untaught people of Scotland, whom it was his high and 
honorable vocation to civilize and instruct; but the lan- 
guage in which they were written was the heart-stirring 
language of the closet. They were altogether different 
from the things we censure, — those pieces of labored 
feebleness, whose polish is but the polish of baldness, — 
things that are not prayers, but the semblances of prayers, 
— not substance, but the reflections of substance, — the 
mere echoes of hearts that reverberate because they are 
hollow. And the difference can be well felt. It can be 
tried by the test of the Scotch officer. On grounds such 
as these we again repeat our remark, — we repeat, that "it 
has been long held by the people of Scotland," and held 
justly, "that prayers laboriously polished in the study ere 
repeated by rote in the pulpit, — fine addresses to Deity 
smoothed up with the same small care which sonneteers 
bestow on odes to their mistresses' eyebrows, — are in real- 
ity very poor sort of things, — mere embodiments, in most 
instances, of an inefficient world-hunting Moderatism, that 
plays at sentence-making." 



356 



MR. ISAAC TAYLOR ON THE 



MR ISAAC TAYLOR ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE 
CHURCH. 

Nothing proper to a Church and State system, says the 
celebrated author of " Ancient Christianity," in his work 
on " Spiritual Despotism," published some years since, — 
" nothing proper to a Church and State system demands 
the subserviency of the Church to the State.'''' Such is the 
decisive declaration of one who, himself from principle an 
Episcopalian, yet laments with the greatest earnestness 
over the "fatal surrender" which the Church of England 
has made to the State of her spiritual prerogative and 
independence, — a step which he regards as in a preemi- 
nent degree the source of those perilous circumstances by 
which she is surrounded. And in this we believe him to be 
not far from the truth. A Church may be subject to many 
corruptions, and may tolerate many abuses ; but until she 
divests herself, as the Church of England has in great 
measure done, of the powers of government and the reins 
of discipline, — of her spiritual independence and free- 
dom, — she possesses within herself that machinery, a due 
exercise of which may accomplish her purification and re- 
vival. Deprived of these powers, however, the well-spring 
of her vitality is poisoned ; she floats a helmless, mastless 
hulk upon the waves, " at the merciment," to quote the 
words of Mr. Taylor, " of her foes and of her friends." 

We are strongly of opinion, from the incidental expres- 
sions made use of by this deservedly esteemed writer in 
the work referred to, that, were his attention turned to 
the present contest of our Church with the civil despotism 
of the day, he would have no hesitation on which side to 
take his stand. He would hesitate not — as he presumes, 
with reference to the Church of England, that no "prac- 
tical and impartial" man would hesitate — "to give his 
aid in restoring to the Established Church that i^depe^- 



INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH. 357 



dence and those vital functions which Christianity de- 
mands for her," and which the Scottish Reformers, in 
contradistinction to those of England, secured to us in 
a manner conformable to God's word, and which, they 
fondly imagined, would preserve us from further molesta- 
tion. Thus he speaks of the English Establishment : — 
"Too long she has consented to be mocked with the 
empty forms of independence ; and is now so placed that 
she must assert and regain her lost prerogatives, or fall 
lower still. The assembling of convocation effectively at 
her own discretion, and for the exercise of substantial 
functions, — the unprompted election of her bishops, and 
the annulling of lay encroachments upon ecclesiastical 
property [an evil that we also wish to see 'annulled'], — 
are obvious points of that Church reform which the course 
of events demands." How refreshing is it, in a Church 
which, with all her boasted emblazonries of rank and pre- 
tension, is trodden under foot by an iron despotism, to 
meet with one of such congenial sentiments with ourselves, 
who can proclaim aloud, with equal boldness and ability, 
her degraded and enslaved condition, and the means 
necessary to be adopted for reinstating her in that status 
which it behooves the Church of Christ to occupy ! Mr. 
Taylor advocates an infusion of lay blood into the organic 
government of the Church, — the complete disenthralment 
from the bonds of state supremacy ; and looks forward to 
the accomplishment of these reforms, along with a correc- 
tion of the abuses of patronage, — such an amendment of 
the whole system "as would concede something to the 
people, and absolutely exclude the merchandise of souls," — 
as fitted to acquire for the Establishment, what she is not 
now possessed of, the submissive and cordial reverence and 
regard of her people. He does not, indeed, acknowledge 
the scriptural right of the people to a direct voice in the 
appointment of their ministers. But the conclusion at 
which he arrives on this point from another source of 
evidence may have equal weight with those who make 



358 ISAAC TAYLOR ON CHURCH INDEPENDENCE. 



primitive practices and ancient fathers the " gods of their 
idolatry ; " and it is, so far as it goes, very satisfactory, as 
coming from one who has made the history of the pristine 
churches a subject of deep and fruitful study, and whose 
predilections are all in favor of the hierarchical system of 
the Church of England. " In fact," he says, " though not 
to be traced in the canonic writings, the popular voice 
and suffrage in the election of the bishop unquestionably 
obtained a very early prevalance, and those who absolutely 
excluded the will of the people in the choice of their 
pastors, although not reproveable by the letter of Scrip- 
ture, yet oppose one of the most ancient and universal of 
ecclesiastical usages." 

In his summary of scriptural proofs concerning the dif- 
ferent forms of Church government, we scarcely think that 
Mr. Taylor at all grapples with or meets the arguments 
and facts by which the system of Presbytery may be main- 
tained from the word of God. He no doubt expresses in 
an able manner the incoherent and destructive nature of 
Congregationalism ; but he seems chary of coming into 
too close collision with the advocates of Presbyterianism. 
We leave it, however, for our readers to judge how far he 
has in the following passage portrayed the leading charac- 
teristics of the two Establishments of this country. " If a 
choice were to be made between two actual forms of Pres- 
byterianism and Episcopacy, whereof the first admits the 
laity to a just and apostolic place in the management and 
administration of the Church, while the second absolutely 
rejects all such influence, and at the same time retains for 
its bishops the baronial dignities and the secular splendor 
usurped by the insolent hierarchs of the middle ages, then, 
indeed, the balance would be one of a different sort; and, 
unless there were room to hope for a correction and reform 
of political prelacy, an honest and modest Christian mind 
would take refuge in the substantial benefits of Presbyteri- 
anism." We are inclined to believe that the writer has in 
these lines, perhaps altogether unwittingly, been trying his 



DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 



359 



hand at portrait-painting; and that the contrast between 
the "counterfeit presentment of the two brothers" tells 
by no means against our northern Establishment. 



DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 

It was natural, as the crisis of the conflict approached, that the 
Evangelical party throughout the parishes of Scotland should adopt 
such an organization as might enable them most effectively to pro- 
mote their principles and vindicate their position. Hence arose 
the Defence Associations which figure in the following article. — Ed. 

It was an important step, not for our country only, but 
for the whole human species, when our humbler country- 
men of old, associating for mutual defence, surrounded a 
few mean villages with rude walls, and procured their 
Charters of Community from monarchs jealous of the 
proud barons, their oppressors. Our historians, especially 
the earlier ones, have dwelt almost exclusively on the hard- 
fought battles of our country, on the barbarous feuds of 
proud and haughty barons, the intrigues of courtiers, and 
the negotiations of statesmen. Our poets and romancers 
have revelled amid the uncouth splendor of courts that 
were but conning their first lessons in politeness, and have 
exhausted their power of narrative and description on the 
barbaric pomp of tournaments, and the spirit-stirring 
scenes of war and the chase. Transactions and events of 
an immensely more important character have been passed 
over undescribed. In tracing to its earliest origin the lib- 
erty of our country, we would pass over kings, barons, and 
knights, — all that has been permitted hitherto most to 
occupy the memory and fill the imagination, — and, de- 
scending from the castle and the palace, we would select, 
as the true benefactors of the present time, the denizens of 



3G0 



DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 



a humbler sphere. We would pick out the rude mechanic 
plying his simple art in his humble cottage, behind the 
rampart of undressed stone which his own hands had 
assisted to rear, — his blackjack of hammered iron, and his 
round head-piece suspended from the rafters above, - — his 
sword crossed over his long bow, and his six-eln spear 
stretching athwart the wall. Burgher does not sound half 
so nobly as knight ; but it is to the burgher, not to the 
knight, that we owe the liberty of the subject, the manu- 
mission of the vassal, the emancipation of the slave, human- 
izing commerce, equal laws, the arts of social life, and the 
first asylums and baiting-places of the Reformation. The 
association of the oppressed many against the grinding des- 
potism of the powerful few has been peculiarly blessed in 
almost all the states of Europe, and nowhere more emphat- 
ically blessed than in our own country. Nay, had we to 
furnish appropriate emblems of the despotism over which, 
in their long struggle, the people ultimately triumphed, 
and of the liberty which they at length achieved, — if we 
could scarce find a fitter symbol of the one than some 
proud " baronial castle, with its huge gray walls thinly 
sprinkled with iron-barred windows, its overhanging bar- 
tizans, its deep moat, its jealous drawbridge, its cruel 
dungeon hid deep from the air and the sun, its court of 
summary trial, and its grave-besprinkled mound of execu- 
tion, — we could scarce devise a more appropriate repre- 
sentative of the other than some humble town, rudely but 
strongly walled round, its hardy inhabitants trained to 
arms, and bound by the most solemn engagements recipro- 
cally to defend each other, its straw-covered council-house 
rising in the midst of its one irregular street, its narrow 
and crowded dwellings clamorous with the sounds of me- 
chanic labor, a few armed burghers watching at its gate, 
and the sweeping declivity below thickly besprinkled with 
its minute and multitudinous patches of cultivation. 

Now that a crisis has arisen in which it is necessary for 
the people of Scotland again to unite, as of old, it is well 



DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 



361 



to consider the kind of arms which it is most their safety 
and interest to wield, and the class of enemies against 
which they would do well first to direct them. Our ances- 
tors commenced operations by drawing closely together, 
and surrounding their humble dwellings with a wall. They 
would scarce have succeeded in obtaining their charters 
of community had they applied for them in the character 
of defenceless serfs. Their descendants must also draw 
closely together; but wall-building will scarcely avail 
them. It must be their work rather to demolish walls 
erected already. 

Our Church Defence Associations may be made to sub- 
serve a very important purpose. We have had occasion 
to remark, oftener than once, that in many of our rural 
districts political opinion is still a serf bound to the soil. 
It is not men, in "most of these, to whom the Reform Bill 
has actually extended the franchise ; it is acres. It is not 
farmers, but groups of fields, estimated in the laird's rent- 
book at fifty pounds per annum, that enjoy the privilege 
of returning representatives to Parliament. The tenant 
is but the mouth-piece of his farm, and the proprietor his 
prompter. Now, without being particularly political, we 
must just say that this is not at all what should be. Opin- 
ion should not be a serf bound to the soil. It is men, not 
acres, who should enjoy the franchise. It is not according 
to the British constitution, either as it was or is, that a 
proprietor should possess as many votes as he possesses 
farms ; and it is well to remember that, as for every privi- 
lege which man enjoys man shall have to give an account, 
the tenant, though he can transfer his vote to his landlord, 
cannot transfer to him his responsibility. It may be quite 
right, if he so will it, that he should vote with his land- 
lord ; but it is at least equally right that he should vote 
with him only because he wills it, and is convinced in his 
own mind that his determination is a good one. In a 
point of singular advantage for observation, we have been 
often astonished to see how implicitly even a rack-rented 

31 



362 



DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 



tenantry seemed to have taken it for granted that the vote 
was their proprietor's, not theirs. Regularly as term-day 
came round, the rent, to its last shilling, had to be pro- 
duced ; and, had bank-agents been as unaccommodating 
as the laird, almost every Martinmas might have witnessed 
its roups of live-stock and utensils ; and yet, notwithstand- 
ing, every dissolution of Parliament saw the votes of an 
oppressed tenantry thirled to the manor-house. Our 
Church Defence Associations are admirably suited to cor- 
rect this evil. There are many merely political questions 
on which it is difficult for plain men to form an opinion, — 
many, too, in which there is so equal a balance of right 
and wrong, that one might hesitate to encounter a con- 
tingent evil, however slight its character, in deciding either 
for or against them. But no true Presbyterian in Scot- 
land, however little skilled in politics, will experience any 
difficulty in making up his mind on the Church question, 
in its bearing on scenes such as that of Culsalmond and 
Marnoch. Directed and impelled by our Defence Associa- 
tions, we trust to see it insinuate its wedge between the 
Intrusionist landlord and the votes of his Non-Intrusionist 
tenants ; and we are of opinion the attention of our 
friends cannot be too strongly directed to this point. The 
wealthy commoner who reckons fifty farms on his roll, and 
the farmer, his tenant, who rents, at fifty pounds per 
annum, one of the smallest of them, are placed politically 
on exactly the same level, and it is surely high time that 
both the proprietor and the farmer should begin to 
know it. 

All other Scottish parties have been already drawn out 
into the political arena ; they have been already tasked to 
their full strength, each against its antagonist party ; nor 
has there been a means left untried by which the power 
of any one of them might be increased. But the Presbv- 
terianism of the Church of Scotland has not yet been 
drawn out in its character as such. It has been lost amid 
other and lower parties ; and, now that it is gathering to a 



DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 



363 



head in its own proper form, it may be well conceived of 
as a new force marching into the heart of a lengthened 
fray. We have referred to a kind of political vis inertice. 
Mr. John Dunlop, in his masterly work on association, tells 
us, in illustrating this principle, that in 1789, when the 
whole existing state of society in France seemed ready to 
explode, and when the assembling of the States-General 
was commenced, the great body of the common people 
remained such careless spectators of the universal commo- 
tion and struggle which was impending, that few of them 
took the trouble of voting at the elections, and that where 
a thousand were expected to come forward, not perhaps 
fifty made their appearance. There has been more of this 
vis inertice- among the Presbyterians of the Church of 
Scotland than perhaps any other body in the kingdom. 
But we have in the present controversy a force potent 
enough to overcome it; and it will, we trust, be a main 
object with our Church Defence Associations to bring this 
force to bear. The passive must be converted into the 
active throughout the country. The "grave livers" of 
Scotland have never been drawn out in any purely secular 
quarrel ; nor has the country, in any of her popular strug- 
gles, presented a very imposing attitude without them. 
They have ever constituted her strength. The poet of 
Scotland who so truly described himself as " prompt to 
learn and wise to know," but whose wisdom and knowledge 
too little influenced his own unhappy career, could see 
clearly from what scenes the glory of his country arose, 
and in what class her strength mainly consisted. Too 
little serious himself, he could yet recognize in her humble 
men of devotion and prayer her " guard and ornament," 
her best wealth in her times of peace, and her encircling 
"wall of fire" in her day of trouble. We can trust that, 
with the Divine blessing, on which all must depend, our 
fast-forming associations will show that he did not over- 
estimate their importance. 



364 



FORESHADOWINGS. 



FORESHADOWINGS. 

Whatever God in his wisdom may have designed as 
the termination of the existing troubles, it were well that 
for the present at least the Church and people of Scot- 
land should be prepared for a time of extremity. Nor do 
we entertain any fear of inducing a timid feeling among 
the assertors of the present quarrel by referring to the 
imminence of the danger. Some of our readers will per- 
haps remember the remark of Burns on one of the criti- 
cisms of a friend 5 who suggested that he should strike out 
from his sublime address of the Bruce the alternative of 
the "gory bed," as impolitic in the circumstances. It 
tended to make death frightful, said the critic, and pre- 
sented a discouraging and disagreeable image, which the 
skilful general would scarce venture to suggest to his 
troops on the eve of a great battle. Burns knew better. 
" It was the battle of Bannoekburn," said the poet, " which 
they were going to fight ; and the man who would have 
shrunk at the image of the 'gory bed' was no man fitted 
to fight there." 

It is imperatively necessary that the country be thor- 
oughly aroused. Its chance of escaping from the present 
imminent danger (if in such a matter we may speak of 
chance) will be in exact proportion to its sense of it. All 
must have remarked how very difficult it is to realize ex- 
traordinary events as things of probable occurrence in one's 
own times. We acquaint ourselves with matters in their 
ordinary course, — with the common, every-day affairs of 
life, — and give to our anticipations of the future, from an 
inherent law of our nature, the complexion of what we 
may term our average experience of the present. And 
hence the difficulty to which we refer. Occurrences simi- 
lar to those more striking events of history which belong 
to experience in its extended sense, but not to our own 



FORESHADOWINGS. 



365 



individual experience, are almost never anticipated as 
probable ; nay, even their very possibility is held doubtful. 
A sort of instinctive, unreasoning skepticism declares 
against them. Many of our readers must remember with 
what feelings, some fifteen or twenty years ago, they were 
in the habit of regarding the narratives of those terrible 
visitations of the plague which, as late as the middle half 
of the seventeenth century, used from time to time to thin 
the population of Britain. Visitations of so frightful a 
character were viewed as belonging exclusively to the past, 
— so exclusively, that their return seemed scarce possible. 
It seemed well-nigh as probable that the country should 
again see that John Milton who had to remove from his 
house in Bunhill Fields during the ravages of the pest, 
as the ravages of the pest itself; and sad stories of dead 
bodies dragged on hurdles to the nearest hillock, and 
thrown into hastily-scooped graves, — of whole hamlets 
left desolate, — of strange barriers arresting the progress 
of the disease in crowded cities, — barriers such as slender 
runnels of water or cross lanes, — of clouds of vapor stand- 
ing up like erect walls over the infected districts, — of 
cottages burnt to the ground, for all their inmates had 
perished, and all within reeked with the rank steam of 
infection ; — these and many such narratives seemed merely 
dreams of tradition, — not sober realities, but a sort of 
misty extravagances, which, however connected with the 
past, no one could associate with times so sober as the 
present. Southey, in one of his earlier prose writings, 
ventured to urge the probability of the return of such 
strange and terrible visitations, and the suggestion was 
regarded as wild and unnatural — as the somewhat outre 
stroke of a bold writer straining after effect. We have 
lived, however, to see cholera strike down a hundred 
millions of the human species ; we have seen it, regulated 
by its own eccentric and inexplicable laws, ravaging our 
cities and villages, as if its districts had been assigned to 
it by the rule and the measuring line. Clouds of murky 

31* " • 



366 



FORESHADOWINGS. 



vapor have stood up for days and weeks together over 
our towns, as if the destruction that was pressing upon 
them had taken to itself a visible form ; cottages have 
been again burnt to the ground for the same sad cause as 
of old ; and, as the flames arose, we have seen their light 
flashing on the lonely graves of their perished inmates, — 
graves scooped out of wooded hillocks, far from church- 
yards and every accustomed place of sepulture, or on the 
skirts of mountain-streams, or the verge of solitary sea- 
shores. Events similar to those which we could scarce 
credit as possible in connection with our own country and 
our own time some eighteen or twenty years ago, are now 
registered in our experience, as portions of our country's 
recent history. And it is well to remark that this sort 
of instinctive skepticism applies as certainly to signal 
atrocities perpetrated by men, as to extraordinary visita- 
tions in the providence of God. A repetition of the Irish 
massacre seems as impossible now as a visit from the pest 
appeared twenty years ago. Men are still slow to believe 
that our civil courts in the nineteenth century may be 
found as decidedly opposed to Christ, his cause and gov- 
ernment, as they were in the seventeenth. The atrocities 
of forced settlements, though we see them occurring 
around us, still seem rather to belong to a former age 
than to the present time ; and the latest era of persecution 
for conscience' sake continues to appear as if it had closed 
when William III. landed in Torbay. It were well for 
the country to be thoroughly aroused from the indifler- 
ency which this natural, though not the less irrational, 
skepticism induces. The revolutionary cycle seems fast 
revolving in Britain. In Scotland, at least, we now stand 
on the very brink of some of the more intolerable evils 
by which great convulsions are invariably preceded ; and 
in a very few months, if the Presbyterianism of the coun- 
try bestir not itself all the more vigorously, it shall have 
to witness, as of old, the disestablishment of the national 
religion, and the ejection from their charges of all its 



FOKESHADOWINGS. 



367 



better pastors. There are more than the controversies 
of the seventeenth century reviving. 

To the people in the present crisis we have but one ad- 
vice : they must arouse, associate, prepare themselves. If 
they but stand still, it will be to witness the infliction of 
one of the widest spread desolations that ever yet visited 
their Church or country. There were only two hundred 
parish churches shut up on the first Sabbath of the winter 
of 1662, through the policy of Commissioner Middleton, 
backed by the tyranny of Charles. The policy of our 
Hopes and Aberdeens, backed by Sir Robert Peel, threat- 
ens to shut up at least twice that number,, and to render 
the others of as little value to the community as the 
churches occupied by the curates during the disastrous 
reign of Prelacy. There can be no doubt that the people 
will be thoroughly roused ; but it is all-important that they 
should be roused in time. It is all-important that they 
should be roused rather to prevent evil than to avenge it. 
They err egregiously who hold that one vigorous blow, 
through which the Evangelism of Scotland would be thrust 
beyond the pale of her Establishment, would restore quiet 
to the country. It would restore to it such quiet as the 
similar blow dealt to it by Middleton did, — a quiet com- 
pared with which all the popular ebullitions of either the 
present century or the last would be scarce worthy of 
being regarded as popular ebullitions at alj. But it would 
be well, surely, for both the Church and her enemies that 
the experiment should not be made. The fight at present 
is on the breach. Better that it should be decided there 
than by blowing up the citadel at a later stage. 



368 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 

PART FIRST. 

An act of Parliament is confessedly a dry-looking docu- 
ment ; a collection of acts forms a dull, unreadable book. 
If we double the amount, the fatigue of perusal necessarily 
doubles; the density increases in due proportion as the 
volumes spread over the shelves, and reaches its acme 
as they multiply into a complete law library. A heavy 
atmosphere presses upon the dust that gathers over the 
folios of Themis, and its dense vapory folds reflect a mirage 
of only slumbrous images. The tall, weighty columns, each 
with its single broad margin patched over with notes, like 
a pond-edge studded with bogs; the sections and para- 
graphs doled out by the tale, as if the framers had been 
fearful, seemingly not without cause, of repeating the same 
provision twice, — here and there the blunder actually com- 
mitted, notwithstanding the precaution, — here and there 
the opposite mistake of a provision running counter to the 
rest, turned, as it were, thwartways in the passage, as logs 
sometimes do when floated down a stream ; the long, loose, 
unmusical sentences, that forget themselves, and run into 
paragraphs; the thick, dense words, that seem selected 
with the express design of eclipsing the meaning, — that 
at least, in many instances, serve admirably to effect the 
apparent purpose; the glimmering cross-lights of idea that 
meet the student at every turning, with all the perplexing 
bewilderment, but none of the picturesqueness, of cross- 
lights in an ancient building; the equable, slumbrous, 
Lethe-like rumble, rumble of the style ; the general resem- 
blance of every one leaf to every other, — of page to page, 
of section to section, of act to act; and then the enormous 
amount of the whole, — one fifty pages following another 
fifty pages, — the bookbinder interposing his fence of 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



369 



pasteboard and calf when we number the thousand, — then 
another thousand commencing, — then another, and another, 
and another, — and, after numbering the term of Methu- 
selah's years twenty times told, the thousands as if still but 
beginning; — truly it seems no way wonderful that so 
many lawyers should be so little acquainted with law, or 
that they should find it so much easier a matter to listen 
to the decisions of the dozen arbitrary legislators of the 
Court of Session, than to plod through the acts of the 
hereditary and representative legislators of the two Houses 
of Parliament. It is easier to listen to decisions than to 
plod through acts; just as it is obviously easier to pick up 
the smattering of information which passes current in the 
gossip of the day, than to ground one's self thoroughly in 
the knowledge which is to be derived from books. " Gigan- 
tic geniuses, fit to grapple with whole libraries," are not 
geniuses of every-day production ; but men qualified to col- 
lect news occur in crowds, go where we may ; and hundreds 
of the class write " solicitor," " advocate," or " W. S." on 
their door-plates, and attend the Parliament House. 

But if it be thus a heavy matter to read law as stored 
up in huge folios, it is far from being a heavy matter to 
read it as written on the face of a country. We pass 
from the sign to that which the sign represents. All is 
cold and obscure abstraction in the one ; all is breathing, 
animated existence in the other. Let us take, by way of 
example, but a single act, — the act through which Com- 
missioner Middleton overturned Presbyterianism in Scot- 
land. It is merely a piece of bad, unicleal prose in the 
statute-book ; but what a deeply interesting though fearful 
tragedy of many scenes does it not appear amid the hills 
and fields, and in the towns and villages of our native 
country ! Gibbets rise tall and black over assembled 
crowds ; and we see in the hands of the public executioner 
gray -haired men of God, content rather to die than deny 
their Master. The churches of the land are silent, or re- 
echo only the mutterings of a debasing superstition. The 



370 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



voice of psalms mingles on the hills with the patter of 
musketry. There is cold, and hunger, and violent death, 
amid yonder rocks and moors, and in those solitary dens 
and caves. Thousands die on fields of battle, or are forced 
into exile, immured in dungeons, borne away to be sold 
as slaves in the colonies, perish in tempests chained to the 
sinking wreck, or welter under flood-mark, as the tide rises, 
tied down amid the ware and tangle of the shore. There 
is blood everywhere, as in the land of Egypt when Moses 
called up the first plague. Blood in council-chambers, — 
blood on the boots and the thumbkins, — blood on the 
ermine of the judge, — blood on the lawn of the bishop, 

— blood on the scaffold and the headsman's axe, — blood 
in the churchyard, where the debased criminal and the 
honored martyr are huddled together in a common grave, 

— blood beside the cottage wall, where the lonely widow 
watches the corpse of her murdered husband. The rising 
sun is reflected on pools of blood, that thicken amid the 
hills beside new-made graves ; it sets upon blood freshly 
spilt on fields strewed with yet quivering carcasses; the 
Clyde flows sullenly along the arches of Bothwell, and the 
eddies are crimsoned with blood. There is blood every- 
where; and the cry of the land rises to Heaven. How 
very terrible the reading of this iniquitous act, when we 
thus pass from the statute-books of the country to its 
history, — from the sign to the thing signified ! We peruse 
the scene a little longer. An empty throne appears in the 
distance; a bigot king wanders, discrowned, in pitiable 
exile ; and the last of his descendants perishes, in scorn and 
beggary, in a foreign land. Take, as another example, the 
scarce less iniquitous act of Queen Anne, and peruse it in 
a similar manner. A dense fog of indifferency and practi- 
cal error creeps over the grand religious institution of the 
country, and in district after district its moral influence 
becomes more than neutralized ; for, instead of ministering 
to the religious feelings of the people, it but serves to shock 
and outrage them. Not a few of our churches become 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



371 



scenes of violence and perjury; from not a few of our 
pulpits there are doctrines promulgated which souls cannot 
receive and live ; and the better men of the country, unable 
to eject those who buy and sell, — those whose traffic, 
darker than that of the money-changers of old, is a traffic 
in men's souls, — quit in sorrow the place so grossly dese- 
crated. One humble chapel rises after another amid their 
hamlets, where they worship in the purity and freedom 
with which their fathers worshipped. But the compara- 
tively indifferent* sink into yet deeper indifference. No 
man cares for their souls ; for when did the hireling care 
for his flock? The evening and morning hymn is silenced 
in many a cottage. Immorality and improvidence come 
in like a flood. The Sabbath becomes a day of weariness, 
— fit preparation for its becoming a day of toil. The old 
spirit of honest independence evaporates ; for, in a state 
of slavery to vice, the whole abject feelings of the slave 
are induced ; the pauperism of the country multiplies a 
hundred-fold, and, fierce in its distress, threatens to play 
the footpad with our capitalists and proprietary. And 
when at length, after the lapse of a century, the spirit of a 
better time revives, it finds but a mutilated body to ani- 
mate, — a body palsied in part, — shorn of not a few of 
its members, and bearing within, in, alas ! no small amount, 
the seeds of corruption. We peruse exactly the same 
statute, in an abridged form, in the settlements of Marnoch 
and Culsalmond ; and what honest man so dull as to miss 
its true meaning in digests so clear, pointed, and concise? 

It is ever an important matter to be able thus to trans- 
late written laws, if we may so speak, into overt acts and 
their consequences. It is a higher ability in its perfection 
than that of the mere lawyer; it is the ability of the 
profound statesman and legislator. All men, however, 
possess it in some degree — even men who cannot so much 
as read written law ; and it is to the general diffusion and 
exercise of this faculty that the Church, in the present con- 
troversy, owes the support of so preponderating a majority 



372 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



of the people. If lawyer-like misinterpretation of statutes, 
or the calumnies of seven-eighths of the public press, could 
have misled them, they would have been all on the other 
side. Mr. Robertson, of Ellon, would not have been plau- 
sible, nor the Earl of Aberdeen diplomatic, in vain; nor 
would almost all have seen fallacies deplorably palpable in 
the arguments of Dr. Cook, and in the utter lack of solidity 
in the motion of Dr. Muir. It was the general ability of 
translating into the tangibilities of action the misinterpre- 
tation and the calumnies, the plausibilities and the diplo- 
macy, the arguments and the motion, that rallied her sup- 
porters round the Church. We are told by the lawyers, 
for instance, that spiritual independence in connection with 
the Establishment means just no more than that degree of 
independence which the Court of Session now chooses to 
allow her. We test the doctrine by the tangibilities of 
history, — action seen retrospectively, — and find that, if it 
be true, all the histories of our Church and country must 
be false. It must be entirely false that, in the long battle 
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Church 
was ultimately victor ; it must be false that the charter 
granted to her in 1592 is still unrepealed, — that there was 
a revolution settlement in her favor, or that an act for 
securing the independence of her government formed a 
basis of the treaty of union. And accordingly we find 
that, by a strange enough fiction of law, the unreality of 
all this is actually taken for granted by the assertors of the 
doctrine, and that, as if there had been no charter, no revo- 
lution settlement, no treaty of union, they argue that the 
Black Acts of 1584 are still in force, — acts which, accord- 
ing to even Principal Robertson, were repealed only eight 
years after their enactment. If this doctrine be true, these 
statutes are still the law of the Church, and all the rest of 
her history is a lie. And to what do the calumnies of the 
press amount when translated into events? What sort of 
light do the outrages at Marnoch and Culsalmond throw 
on the oft-repeated assertion, that it is clerical power, not 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



373 



popular right, for which the Church is contending ? What 
clerical party, on the meanest and most grossly palpable 
of subterfuges, were content to increase their own power 
at the expense of the people there? And in what party, 
on the other hand, did the people recognize their best and 
most devoted friends? 

A similar translation of the Earl of Aberdeen's bill at 
once fixes its character. If the bill be a desirable bill, then 
the dilemma, in which ministers of the gospel could do 
only one of two things, — either outrage their own con- 
science by pronouncing reasons of objection to be good 
which, from the very nature of things, they could not 
know to be either good or otherwise, or of outraging the 
consciences of congregations by subjecting them to forced 
settlements, — this, we say, if the bill be desirable, would 
be, of consequence, a desirable dilemma. We have read 
somewhere of the Code Napoleon, that in at least one 
important respect it differs materially from the statute- 
book of our own country. The bearing of our statutes on 
special cases is fixed by decisions ; the laws of the Code, 
on the contrary, are illustrated by examples. Special cases 
are imagined beforehand ; and it is the part of the magis- 
trate to compare with these the cases which actually occur, 
and to decide accordingly. Examples conceived on a sim- 
ilar principle would be fatal accompaniments to the bill of 
Aberdeen. Nor are we quite sure that they would tell 
very decidedly in favor of the liberum arbitrium. There 
are cases, at least, in which even it would translate lamely 
enough into fact, — cases in which presbyteries and synods 
might be as free from the necessity of perpetrating forced 
settlements as Adam was free, ere the Fall, from all com- 
pulsion to sin, and in which their freedom might possibly 
be not better employed. At all events, in all human affairs 
the balance of justice wavers least when there are efficient 
checks to steady it. These, however, are but desultory 
remarks, and serve merely to introduce the subject which 
we sat down to illustrate. It is our purpose to attempt 

32 



374 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



translating into fact one or two of the plausibilities of Mr. 
Robertson, of Ellon, one or two of the arguments of Dr. 
Cook, and, perhaps, one or two of the assertions of Dr. 
Muir; and to show that it has been chiefly through a tacit 
process of translation of the kind we describe that they 
have so utterly failed in impressing the religious portion 
of the community, or other than an inconsiderable portion 
of the Scottish public in general. We are told that Candid 
remarked with surprise, in the Court of El Dorado, that 
the bon mots of the king, even after they had been trans- 
lated, still remained bon mots. The reverse of this will be 
found to be exactly the character of the principles which 
we intend translating into fact. They decompose, and 
become mephitic in the process, — 

" Woman to the waist, and fair, 
But ending foul in many a scaly fold." 



PART SECOND. 

Corporal Trim translated the fifth commandment into 
fact by settling on his aged parents the full half of his 
meagre pay as a soldier. Intrusion and non-intrusion, 
patronage and anti-patronage, are things equally capable 
of being translated into fact ; nor is the process too difficult 
a one to be mastered by men well-nigh as humble as even 
the corporal himself. The tangibilities which these terms 
express bear upon all. The country may have its tens of 
thousands on whom a clergyman has never been intruded, 
and its hundreds of thousands who have never had an 
opportunity of exercising their choice in the selection of a 
clergyman for themselves ; but it does not contain a single 
individual, to whom religion is anything, whether Church- 
man or Dissenter, who is not living in a certain felt relation 
to some one or other of the tangibilities of intrusion or 
non-intrusion, patronage or anti-patronage. We ourselves, 



TRANSLATIONS INTO PACT. 



375 



for instance, have lived at different periods of our life in 
relation to them all, — now subjected to the evils of an 
unmitigated patronage, now participating in the limited 
privileges of a bare non-intrusion principle, now enjoying 
all the many signal advantages of free, uncontrolled choice. 
We have shared, in turn, in all that the Church is contend- 
ing for, and in all she is contending against ; and a piece 
of simple narrative, bearing on the circumstances of each 
case, may at once serve to illustrate our meaning, and to 
show not only how very important the principles of the 
present controversy are, but the secret also of the people's 
thorough understanding of them. 

There are parishes in Scotland which contain areas of 
about twelve hundred square miles, and whose parish 
churches were some twenty years ago removed from the 
parish churches in their nearest neighborhood by a long 
day's journey. We resided in one of these for part of a 
twelvemonth, ere the government had given its supple- 
mentary chapels to the Highlands, and saw, for the first 
time, at the bottom of a little sandy bay that opened into 
the boisterous Atlantic, a Scottish parish church, between 
which and the nearer places of worship there stretched 
forty miles of wild sea-coast on the one hand, and fifty 
miles on the other. A stormy sea of barren hills occupied 
the interior; and the eye, in passing from the serrated 
peaks and gray, dizzy precipices of the higher grounds, 
encountered scarce anything more inviting on the lower 
than dark moors, and still darker morasses, — long, narrow 
plains at the bottom of retiring bays, overblown by sand, 

— and rock-skirted promontories studded with stone. It 
was no fivorable locality for illustrating the excellence of 
the Voluntary principle. All the more respectable sort of 
people who can treat themselves on Sabbaths to a joint 
and a decent suit of broadcloth contrive also to treat 
themselves to a sermon; but — alas for the utterly poor! 

— nineteen-twentieths of the simple inhabitants of this 
wild district could treat themselves to neither Sabbath 



376 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



joints nor broadcloth. For at least one-third part of every 
year they had no meal, even, and scarce any potatoes; — 
their chance of provisions for the day depended almost 
exclusively on the uncertain fishing of the night ; and they 
had to rest wholly for their religious provision on the 
National Establishment. Voluntaryism had done nothing 
for them, and could do nothing. But what had the Estab- 
lishment done ? It had given them a qualified minister, — 
a man who had been tried for a very gross crime by the 
General Assembly, but at a period when the General As- 
sembly was the one court in Europe in which no such 
accusation was in any instance followed by conviction; 
and so, though all the parish held him guilty, he was still 
a qualified minister. He was naturally a dull man, of 
somewhat less than average intellect, based on a strong 
animal nature ; and his pulpit ministrations were perhaps 
the most miserable things of the kind ever heard, — pieces 
of disjointed patchwork, badly read, borrowed in part 
without judgment, and, where original, written without 
care or thought. It was impossible to listen to them. 
Regarded in a religious light, they were desecrations of 
the Sabbath ; in an intellectual, mere lullabies to set men 
asleep. The manse was one of the houses in the parish in 
which no family worship was kept, save for one week in 
the year, — the week in which the sacrament was dis- 
pensed, — and then, in order to appear as decent as possible 
in the eyes of one or two low-country ministers who 
usually came to assist on such occasions, the family were 
called together, and the form gone through. We saw in 
one instance an act of discipline performed in the parish. 
The minister had come home from his morning walk fierce 
with passion, — actually bellowing. His two elders were 
instantly sent for, to hold a session ; and three boys were 
brought before them to undergo the censure of the Church. 
The little fellows had met their minister in his walk, and 
had deemed it excellent sport to remind him, somewhat 
too circumstantially, of the offence for which, a few years 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



37T 



before, he had been tried by the General Assembly. And 
such was an average specimen of the respect entertained 
for him by his parishioners. We cannot give the darker 
shades of this picture ; we shall not even hint at them. 
Be it enough to say, that such was the only clergyman in 
a tract of country considerably more than thirty miles 
square, and that we had no alternative, for some thirty 
Sabbaths together, but that of either attending his church, 
or of attending no church at all. To have heard sermon 
anywhere else would have involved a two-days' journey. 
Here, then, so far as we ourselves and ninety-nine hun- 
dredths of the poor parishioners were concerned, the worst 
tangibilities of intrusion were involved. Arguments trans- 
lated into facts the most stubborn bore equally against the 
plausibilities of Voluntaryism on the one hand, and the 
sophisms of Moderatism on the other. The reservoir pro- 
vided here at the public expense was but an accumulation 
of filth, breathing miasma and infection. Then, why care 
for its maintenance ? say the Voluntaries. Because there 
was none other in the locality, and the people perished for 
thirst. Then, why now endanger its existence? say the 
Moderates. Because, existing as a mere tank of stagnant 
corruption, it mattered not to the surrounding country 
whether it existed or no ; or, we should perhaps rather 
say, its existence, in the circumstances, was a positive evil. 
We exert ourselves, therefore, not to break down, the 
reservoir, but to purify it, — to cleanse it from the feculent 
poison which has long reeked and festered in it, and to fill 
it with the pure and living stream, that all around may 
drink and be refreshed. This, however, is not quite what 
we intended to say. We set out by remarking that the 
country does not contain a single individual, to whom 
religion is anything, who is not living in a certain felt 
relation to the tangibilities of intrusion or non-intrusion ; 
and we thus present the reader with one passage in our 
experience of the tangibilities of intrusion. Need we say 
that gladly would we have exercised the veto on the 

32* 



378 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FAcT. 



appointment of this Highland minister of the Moderate 
school, or that all his people would eagerly have joined 
with us? Of the latter, we may just remark, that they 
were a simple-hearted, inoffensive race of men, not indif- 
ferent to the blessings of the gospel, and not too unintelli- 
gent to distinguish it from its counterfeits. 

We changed the scene for a district in the south of 
Scotland, not five miles from the Scottish capital. It 
would be worth while inquiring how it should almost 
always happen that the common country people in the 
neighborhood of large towns are less intelligent, not only 
than the common people of the towns themselves, but also 
than the common country people who reside in more 
sequestered localities. Such, however, in our individual 
experience at least, we have ever found to be the fact. 
We have seen shaded maps, on which, from the statistics 
of crime as furnished by the criminal courts of the several 
districts, a darker or lighter shade was given to particular 
localities. Here, where crime most abounded; the shade 
was intensely deep ; there, where it was somewhat less 
frequent, a lighter tint spread over the provinces ; yonder, 
where it was less frequent still, the tint was still lighter ; 
and a faint twilight tinge indicated a yet lower degree of 
delinquency than characterized even the lowest of the 
other three. Could the comparative ignorance and intelli- 
gence of the several provinces of a country be marked out 
in a similar manner, we are convinced that well-nigh all 
our large towns would present the singular appearance of 
specks of comparative light, encircled, if we may so speak, 
by halos of darkness; and that a medium tint, here 
darker, there lighter, would spread over the country be- 
yond. In the southern locality to which we had now 
removed we found ourselves within the very circle of one 
of these tenebrific halos. There was a stagnant vacancy 
of mind among the people, — a slumbrous lack of intelli- 
gence, — and at least as strongly-marked an indifference 
to religion as to all kinds of useful secular knowledge. 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



379 



Carters, common laborers, and farm-servants formed the 
great bulk of the population, with a thin sprinkling of me- 
chanics, petty dealers, and public-house keepers. Church- 
ffoino* anions: the carters and laborers seemed to have 
entirely worn out; the farm-servants were better but by a 
single degree ; and, whatever one might have thought of 
religion itself, there was certainly little to afford pleasure 
in contemplating the more palpable effects of the want of 
it here. The men, dirty and unwashed, and in their week- 
day clothes, might be seen loitering about their hamlets 
every fair Sabbath morning, more especially about the 
public houses, to which, in the villages, according to the 
too faithful description of Cowper, almost every tenth step 
conducted the traveller. The Sabbath evening passed in 
brawling and coarse debauch. Not the Highland parish 
itself presented to the Voluntary a field more hopeless, 
though, of course, from an entirely different cause. In the 
southern locality there was money enough consumed on 
the taverner to have supported half a dozen clergymen ; 
but while there existed a strong appetite for what the 
taverner had to give, there existed no appetite whatever 
for what the clergyman had to give. The supply was fitted 
to the demand, on the true Adam Smith principle, and 
there were no efforts made at the time to lessen the one 
kind of appetite, or to create the other. The parish had, 
of course, its qualified minister, — a respectable, indolent, 
not unsensible Moderate, within whose bounds of superin- 
tendence one could have lived for years not in the least 
in danger of his coming to the knowledge of the fact. 
"We never saw him, though we resided a considerable part 
of two twelvemonths in his parish, except in the pulpit. 
There, however, we have heard him read, rather drowsily, 
a sort of essays called sermons, in which there was now 
and then a respectful allusion to Christianity as something 
very good, and neither nonsense nor heresy, but in which 
flat and unprofitable vacancy was occupied by but the 
uncertain echoes of ill-defined thought, and in which ro 



380 



TRANSLATIONS INTO PACT. 



Saviour was offered to a perishing people, and no scheme 
of salvation unfolded to them through his blood. A 
respectable rural congregation — small, compared with the 
population of the parish, but not very small absolutely — 
dozed around him in the pews, or in waking fancy sowed 
their turnips or reaped their corn. In relation to ourselves, 
at least, the case was one of decided intrusion. We would 
have vetoed, if we could, this inoffensive Moderate, of 
whom nothing worse could be said than that he was 
of no manner of use ; we would have vetoed him, and 
have taken very conscientiously, when we had done, the 
necessary declaration. In this southern district, however, 
less than a journey of two clays sufficed to bring us out 
and home from other churches than the parish one. Dr. 
M'Crie preached within fewer than five miles of us ; and 
so, quitting our state-provided minister, we became Dis- 
senter for the time. One example more of a similar kind. 

The Voluntary controversy had burst out in its first 
fury, and, with certainly no long-cherished prejudice in 
favor of Establishments to mislead us, — with very con- 
siderable experience, too, of the working of at least one 
Establishment, — we had quietly taken our side. We had 
gone to reside in a southern burgh, filled at the time with 
the buzz of politics and the din of controversy. Volun- 
taryism mustered strong, and an incipient Chartism still 
stronger ; and, not particularly enamored of the spirit of 
either principle, we naturally sought the parish church in 
preference to any of the three chapels of the place. We 
had no previous knowledge of the party to which the cler- 
gyman' belonged. We knew merely that he was a cler- 
gyman of the Establishment; and establishment at that 
period was the great watchword of the party to which we 
had attached ourselves. We found that he was a gentle- 
man, — certainly not gross, and by no means either unac- 
complished or uninformed. There was a considerable 
amount of elegance in his discourses. A laudable degree 
of care had been obviously bestowed on the composition. 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



381 



The thinking, if neither bold nor original, had enough of 
vigor to solicit the attention of some of his more intelligent 
people, — almost all conservatives, — and his perorations, 
generally neat, bore always some complimentary reference 
to a Saviour, and to some inexplicable benefit which He 
had bestowed upon mankind. But what that benefit was, 
or how mankind might avail themselves of it, this respect- 
able gentleman neither knew himself, nor could he tell it 
to others. His theology rose no higher than that of Blair ; 
his ability of enforcing it was considerably lower; and had 
we been set to pick out in all literature, sacred and secular, 
the compositions which his discourses least resembled, we 
would have selected the Epistles of St. Paul. It was pity 
for him ! He was generous and hospitable, though a little 
imprudent, perhaps ; for he sometimes gave dinners on Sab- 
bath, — a thing which no Moderate minister should do in 
these latter evil days, however much inclined. He could 
occasionally give his pulpit, too, to men of his own party 
so much more extreme than himself, that even his congre- 
gation — a sufficiently Moderate one — were accustomed 
to complain. The only sermon and prayers we ever heard 
from a. clergyman confessedly not Unitarian in which even 
the name of Christ did not occur, we heard delivered from 
his pulpit, but not by himself. We continued to attend 
his church for nearly two months ; but, beginning to find 
that establishments may be countenanced at too high a 
price, we left him for the time, and went over to the Vol- 
untaries. Nor was the change, in this instance at least, 
very advantageous ; but if the animating spirit was not 
superior, the form of words was at least more sound. We 
need scarce add, that our relation to this accomplished 
and highly qualified minister was the intrusion relation; 
that we would have vetoed him if we could, and taken the 
declaration. But it is high time to illustrate the opposite 
principle, — the non-intrusion one, as opposed to the anti- 
patronage principle on the one hand, and to the intrusionist 
principle on the other. A single instance may serve to 



382 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



translate it into fact. We have lived under the ministry 
of men whom we would not have chosen, and whom we 
could not have rejected. 

A country parish far from towns, with a simple rural 
population considerably out of the way of the influence 
of our lighter periodical literature, and with the Shorter 
Catechism stereotyped on their general tone of thinking; 
— a good sincere man, of moderate ability, laboring among 
them in the ministry, walking conscientiously his round 
of duty, and useful and acceptable in that round, not so 
much from any intrinsic fitness in himself, as from his 
practical acquaintance with that scheme of salvation which 
He who adapts all his means to the accomplishment of 
his ends has thoroughly accommodated to the wants and 
wishes of the human heart. We have lived in such par- 
ishes, and under the ministry of such men. We have 
remarked, too, that such parishes, left to their free choice, 
would select for themselves such men. The higher order 
of minds would scarce fit them equally well; — a principle 
which applies in a similar degree to all literature and all 
philosophy. Between the loftier and the humbler minds 
there must exist an intermediate class ; wanting which, the 
lowlier could receive no benefit from the loftier. Burke 
was unintelligible frequently in even the House of Com-, 
mons ; and until Colin Maclaurin brought down the 
"Principia" of Newton to the still high level of the pre- 
vious flights of philosophy, men of no ordinary intellectual 
stature had to take its extraordinary merits on trust. It is 
on identically the same principle that in a simple country 
district the gospel would be more acceptable and more 
useful from a Boston than from a Butler. And hence the 
importance of permitting men, in such matters, both to 
judge and choose for themselves. The mind requires its 
particular fit as certainly as the body, and, when enlight- 
ened by Christian principle, takes its own measure best. 
What we meant to remark, however, was, that in such 
parishes we have felt ourselves living in relation to the 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 383 

tangibilities of the mere non-intrusion principle. Left to 
ourselves, we would have perhaps chosen men of a higher 
intellectual order, — men such as, in Edinburgh for in- 
stance, all, whether Churchmen or Dissenters, can virtually 
choose for themselves, in virtue of their living in relation 
to the tangibilities of the anti-patronage principle ; but 
never surely would we have vetoed such men. 



PART THIRD. 



John Knox might have been an English bishop had he 
willed it. It is matter of history that the offer of a diocese 
was made him at the special request of Edward VI., backed 
by his council; and, could honors and emoluments, and 
the favor of royalty, have biassed the reformer, Puseyism 
would now be looking up to him as one of her transmitters 
of the apostolic virtue. He would have formed a con- 
necting link in the long electric chain through which she 
charges her surplice-coated vessels of the altar with the 
subtile and fiery fluid which already lights tapers there, 
and bids fair ere long to kindle up fagots. But Knox 
himself, in the supposed case, like all the better bishops, 
his contemporaries and friends, would have been utterly 
unconscious of what he conveyed. The tractors of the 
mesmerist take as much note of the planetary fluid which 
they are said to transmit, as he would have done of the 
apostolic ichor. We are told by Dr. M'Crie of the Lati- 
mers and Cranmers, his associates, that they were " stran- 
gers to those extravagant and illiberal notions which were 
afterwards adopted by the fond admirers of the hierarchy 
and liturgy. They would have laughed," says the histo- 
rian, "at the man who would have seriously asserted that 
the ceremonies constituted any part of the ' beauty of 
holiness,' or that the imposition of the hands of a bishop 
was essential to the validity of ordination. They would 
not have owned that person as a Protestant who would 



884 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 

have ventured to insinuate that where this was wanting 
there was no Christian ministry, no ordinances, no Church, 
and perhaps — no salvation." Nor are we left to guess at 
the opinions of Knox on the subject. In the concluding 
chapter of the " First Book of Discipline " — a work hastily 
drawn up, but of which the well-matured materials must 
have revolved as thought in the mind of the reformer for 
years — we are told that the Popish priesthood, " having 
received no lawful calling to the holy ministry, are utterly 
devoid of either power or authority to administer the 
sacraments of Christ." For it is " not the clipping of 
crowns," it is added, " nor the crossing of fingers, nor the 
blowing of those dumbe dogges called the bishops, nor yet 
the laying on of their hands, that maketh true ministers 
of Christ Jesus." What then? Certain it is that what 
Rome itself did not possess, Rome could not have con- 
ferred on others. But how are true ministers made ? Hear 
the reformer himself. " By the Spirit of God, first of all, 
inwardly moving the heart to seek to enter into the holy 
calling for Christ's glory and the profite of his Kirk ; there- 
after by the nomination of the people, the examination 
and approval of the learned, and public admission by both 
the Church and the flock." Assuredly a more likely mat- 
ter! — a better scheme, obviously, than the clipping or 
crossing process, the blowing of the "dumbe dogges," or 
the laying on of their hands. Knox lived three centuries 
ago; but we are quite content to stake his masculine 
understanding against that of Newman and Pusey united, 
giving them all the odds of the world's progress into the 
bargain. 

Now, there are great truths embodied in this singularly 
pregnant sentence of the reformer, and very admirably do 
they translate into fact. They describe adequately the 
qualified minister, in the only rational definition of the 
term, — a man qualified to be useful in his high walk of 
duty, because called to it by God himself, chosen by the 
people, and admitted by the Church. We sketched in our 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



385 



last, as specimens of a numerous class, three several clergy- 
men under whom we had been living at different times in 
the intrusion relation, and described them as all qualified 
ministers according to the Moderate definition. One of 
the statements of Dr. Cook, in the anti-patronage debate 
of last General Assembly, fully bears us out. The con- 
fessed leader of his .party rose to say, that "absolute 
patronage had never been known in this country." There 
was laughter, as well there might be, from the opposite 
benches, and cries of "Marnoch!" "Marnoch!" — "Will 
the gentlemen hear but my explanation?" said the reverend 
Doctor, somewhat testily. " It will remove all ground for 
the merriment they have manifested. Can a patron go 
elsewhere but to a man who has affixed to him the stamp 
of the Church's approbation? No man can be brought 
into a living whom the Church has not solemnly and 
carefully examined, and declared fit for the work of the 
ministry." And to exactly the same effect is the doctrine 
maintained by Mr. Robertson, of Ellon. It is on this 
principle, he holds, that the late Presbytery of Strathbogie 
did right, not wrong, in giving the qualified minister 
Edwards to the parish of Marnoch. It is on this principle 
that, nicely conscientious, he cannot sustain mere dissent 
on the part of the people as an adequate -ground for reject- 
ing a presentee, and demands, therefore, tangible reasons 
of objection on which he may sit and judge. His entire 
hostility to the veto is founded on this principle, — the 
principle that all the licentiates and all the ministers of 
the Church must be held qualified, unless the contrary can 
be established; just as in the eye of the law all men must 
be held innocent of crime unless they can be proven guilty. 
And on nearly a similar basis did Dr. Muir found his motion 
in the General Assembly of 1839. The fundamental prin- 
ciple of the party involves, when translated into fact, either 
the great and palpable falsehood that all the ministers and 
all the licentiates of the Church of Scotland are qualified 
to edify the body of Christ, and, of necessity, not only 

33 



386 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



members of that body themselves, but also peculiarly fitted 
for their calling by God himself ; or the equally palpable 
falsehood that the Christian people have no other measure 
of duty, with respect to what and whom they hear, than 
the ability of church courts to detect delinquency and 
error. We draw bolt and bar every night, and set a guard 
in our streets, in the belief that there may be thieves and 
men of violence abroad. Fling open your doors, says 
Moderatism, and dismiss the watch. The millions of the 
country are all honest and inoffensive, except the few hap- 
less individuals who have been convicted of crime in the 
High Court of Justiciary, and either thrust out of the 
world or banished the kingdom. 

We have opposed the priest-making of Puseyism to the 
process through which, according to Knox, true ministers 
of Jesus Christ are made. The one is all sheer material- 
ism, — "crossing," " clipjmig," "blowing," and the "laying 
on of hands." The very basis of the other is spiritual. 
But it is not all spiritual. It is in part spiritual, in part 
intellectual, and, if we may so express ourselves, negatively 
moral ; and it will be found that it is the merely negatively 
moral and intellectual portions of it which Moderatism 
selects, and that the spiritual is altogether rejected. It 
approaches the Puseyite scheme to the nearest degree 
possible in the circumstances ; but in one very important 
respect, each tried by its own standard, it falls materially 
below it. 

" We cannot try men's hearts," said the old statesman, 
when passing judgment on the favorite of a friend who 
had been recommended as faithful, but rejected as incom- 
petent, — "we cannot try men's hearts, but we can at least 
catechize their heads." Now, there is a provision in the 
scheme of Knox for the catechizing of the head. The 
approbation of learned ministers, appointed for the purpose 
of examination, is a sine qua non to admission. Character, 
too, in the negative sense, is held to be at least equally 
important. "It is to be observed," says the reformer, 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



387 



"that no person noted with publique infamie be either 
promoted to the regiment of the Church, or retained in 
ecclesiastical administration." And such, in the constitut- 
ing of a true ministry, was the part given to church courts, 
in contradistinction to the part assigned in the same work 
in the first instance to the Spirit of God, and the part 
assigned to the people in the second. The Church, ac- 
cording to the Puseyite scheme, deals with the material- 
isms of ordination, reckoning on a necessarily accompany- 
ing virtue ; the Scottish Church, in her courts, according 
to somewhat less than one-half the scheme of Knox, deals 
with matters equally tangible and evident, — matters of 
doctrine, acquirement, and, in the low judicial sense of the 
term, character. Dr. Pusey and his friends give us the 
evidence of our senses for the crossing, the blowing, and the 
laying on of hands. Dr. Cook and his friends, selecting 
one portion of the scheme of Knox, profess equally to give 
us the evidence of our senses for the literature, the theol- 
ogy, and, if we may so express ourselves, the lack of char- 
acter positively bad. Both deal equally with tangibilities ; 
but there is this striking difference between them : the 
tangibilities in the case of Puseyism, viewed in connection 
with its own ostensible beliefs, are fraught with a necessary 
virtue. In virtue of his baptism, the priest is a regenerated 
man; in virtue of his ordination, — we apologize to our 
readers for using such terms, but they are those of the 
party, — in virtue, we say, of his ordination, he is both 
qualified to regenerate others, that is, to baptize them, and 
to feed their souls with the body of the Lord, — that is, to 
administer to them the sacrament of the Supper. Mod- 
eratism is less consistent. It does not hold that baptism 
is regeneration ; it does not hold that the sacrament of the 
Supper is the body of the Lord ; it does not hold that any 
of those tangibilities on which it insists — literature, the- 
ology, or negative character — is what the sacraments are 
not — conversion. It holds — for in the circumstances it 
is impossible it should hold otherwise — it holds that a 



388 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



fully qualified and accomplished minister — one who, 
according to Dr. Cook, cannot, in the nature of things, 
be intruded, no, not into a Culsalmond or a Marnoch, 
seeing that the " Church has affixed to him the stamp of 
her approbation," and whom Mr. Robertson could not con- 
scientiously reject in virtue of any rejection on the part 
of the people — may be, notwithstanding, an unconverted 
man, practically unacquainted with the gospel himself, and 
with neither wish nor will to urge the acceptance of it 
upon others. 

But though such be the consistency of Moderatism, 
not such was the scheme, nor such the views, of Knox. 
Church courts were left to deal with facts and arguments, 

— to catechize the head and the life of the presentee. To 
the people a part at least equally important was assigned, 
and in which, resting as it did between God and their con- 
science, the Church too well knew her duty to interfere. 

"Christ the Head of every man!" There is a duty, 
doubtless, which the Church owes to her adorable Head, 
and to the people her members. But in no degree does 
that duty supersede the duty which every individual 
member owes to Christ. as his Head ; and his responsibility 
for what and how he hears is a responsibility which he 
cannot roll over upon any Church. Churches, however 
false and detestable, are never to be summoned to the bar 
of judgment. Their portion is in this world exclusively. 
The tyrants of the Inquisition must be there, — the assas- 
sins of St. Bartholomew's day, — the bloodhounds of the 
Irish massacre, — the murderers of Hamilton, and Wish art, 
and Walter Mill, — the kindlers of the flames of Smith- 
field, — the iron-hearted persecutors of the Piedmontese, 

— all who in the cause of Rome pursued to the death the 
saints of the living God. But Rome herself will not be 
there. Her judgment shall be in this world. Long ere 
the great white throne shall be set, or the books opened, 

— ere the sea, and death, and hell, shall give up their dead, 

— must her place be void among the nations, — a dark 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 389 

and silent blank, where there shall no light shine and no 
voice be heard, and from which, for ages and centuries, 
shall the smoke of her burning ascend ; while around and 
over shall the great voice of much people be heard, prais- 
ing God "for his righteous judgments" in "avenging the 
blood of his servants at her hand." Nor will the Scottish 
Episcopal Church stand at that awful bar. Not Rome 
herself wears a redder surplice, nor do her hands smell 
more rankly of murder. But her portion will be assigned 
her in this present world also. One Church only shall 
abide the day of the Lord's coming, — that Church, of all 
climes and all ages, which shall comprise all saints, and the 
roll of whose members is the Book of Life. It is as indi- 
viduals, each man apart,, that all shall have to stand at the 
bar of final judgment ; and hence the necessary recognition 
of the will of the people in all for which the people shall 
have to answer there. Hence, too, the solemn bearing of 
the doctrine of Christ's Headship on the existing contro- 
versy, not only, and not chiefly even, in its connection 
with the Scottish Church, but in its bearing on every one 
of the Church's members individually. To Christ, as his 
Head and King, must every man render an account of how 
and what he hears. And hence the peculiar fitness of the 
enlightened and truly Christian principle of Knox. Mark 
the close adaptation, the one to the other, of the two first 
qualifications which he lays down as essential to the char- 
acter of the minister of Christ, and the formation of the 
pastoral tie. The first, in an especial manner, concerns 
the minister himself. It involves as its basis conversion 
to God, for without conversion qualification cannot exist ; 
and then, further, "the Spirit of God inwardly moving 
the heart to seek to enter into the holy calling of - the 
ministry, for Christ's glory and the profit of the Kirk." On 
this surely most important foundation rests the ordination 
formulas of both the English and the Scottish Church. 
Hence the solemn avowal of the candidate for orders in 
the one, that he judges himself "to be inwardly moved by 

33* 



390 



TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 



the Holy Ghost to take the office upon him." Hence the 
not less solemn pledge of the licentiate in the other, that 
" zeal for the honor of God, love to Jesus Christ, and desire 
of saving souls, are his great motives and chief inducements 
in entering into the functions "of the holy ministry, and not 
worldly designs and interests." But this is not enough. 
For the truth of this solemn oath there is but one man 
responsible, — he who takes it; whereas, the consequences 
and character of his ministry must inevitably affect more 
than himself; — the people have also their responsibility. 
If he must render an account of what and in what spirit he 
preaches, they also must render an account of what and in 
what spirit they hear. " Christ is the Head of every man." 
And so the people's turn comes next. It is the people who 
must nominate. By the light which God has vouchsafed, 
— by their sympathies, their experience, and their knowl- 
edge, as Christians, — by those deeply based, undefinable 
feelings through which the voice of the true Shepherd is 
distinguished from that of the stranger and the hireling, — 
through, in short, that entire capacity in Christ's people 
to which the command, "Beware of false teachers," is 
addressed by Christ himself, — must their views be regu- 
lated, their choice directed. It is they, the people, not 
presbyteries or synods, who are mainly interested in the 
matter. Life and death must tell of it. Throughout time 
the complexion of their spiritual being may depend upon 
it. Its effects, as it regards them, are to stretch onwards 
through eternity, and reach the dread bar of final judg- 
ment. And who, in a question so vital, shall dare inter- 
fere, and take the decision out of their hands, though all 
unable, in the impotence of presumption, to divest them 
of the attaching responsibility? Who are the prophets 
prepared to stand in this gap? Muirs, Cooks, and Robert- 
sons ? One tells us there can be no such thing as intrusion 
in the circumstances, seeing that all clergymen are alike 
qualified : " There is no man to whom a patron can go who 
has not affixed to him the stamp of the Church's approba- 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



391 



tion." Another assures us that his conscience interferes, 
and that he must be permitted, therefore, to decide for the 
Marnochs and Culsalmonds of the country, that Edwardses 
may be thrust into the one, and Middletons into the other. 
A third takes a still bolder flight. The wise, the good, the 
venerable of the country, assert the principle of Knox; 
and he coolly tells them that they are just "taking a forward 
step in the great march, the end of which would be, in 
Scotland, the dissemination of infidelity and misrule." 

It is unnecessary to show how miserably these men fail 
in their duty, by thus absorbing that of the people into 
their own, — confounding, by something immensely worse 
than any mere confusion of idea, the examination of the 
Church with the privileges of the flock. Nor need we 
again refer to the nice and masterly precision with which 
Knox could line out the provinces of each. It would be 
no easy matter to exhaust our subject. It stretches along 
the entire line of the existing controversy. Every princi- 
ple has its corresponding fact ; every argument its answer- 
ing illustration. 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 

We have had occasion oftener than once to remark the 
great celerity of movement, if we may so speak, which 
characterizes the events of the present age. It would 
seem as if the locomotive and the railroad had been intro- 
duced into every department of human affairs, — as if the 
amount of change which sufficed in the past scheme of 
Providence for whole centuries had come to be compressed, 
under a different economy, within the limits of less than 
half a lifetime. Events thicken in these latter scenes of 
the great drama. There is a condensation of the matter 
as the volume draws to its close — the adoption of a closer 
and denser type. One seems almost justified in holding 
that the great machine of society is on the eve of being 



392 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



precipitated on some all-important crisis, and that the 
rapidity with which the wheels revolve marks the sudden 
abruptness of the descent. 

Now, there is at least one advantage which should be 
derived from living in such a time. It furnishes opportu- 
nities which have a tendency, if well employed, of length- 
ening the term of one's rational existence. It provides 
reflection with the materials of extended observation, and 
enables us to weigh one class of events against another, 
not, as our fathers did, in two unequal scales, — the one 
furnished by personal experience, the other by the uncer- 
tainties of historical narrative, — but in the more equally 
adjusted balances of personal experience alone. A Scotch- 
man of the times of Charles I. knew of only religious 
struggles. It was the one question of the age, whether all 
religious light was to pass to the people through the me- 
dium of Laud and his coadjutors, broken into a colored 
maze of deceptive splendor, in which every object put on 
a false and distorted appearance ; or whether they should 
not look direct on that Sun of Revelation which, more 
emphatically than in the meaning of Solomon, " it is a 
good thing to behold," and whose bright yet sober efful- 
gence is the untinted medium of truth. A century passed, 
and a sleepy expression of mediocre power and half-intel- 
ligence rested on the face of British society. The great 
religious struggle had been over for more than an age ; and 
the denizens of the time, in summing up the portion of his- 
tory which fell within the range of their own experience, 
could have told of little else than of the petty intrigues of 
corrupt and selfish statesmen, or of the conflicting claims of 
rival princes, — men by whom kingdoms, with their people, 
were regarded as but mere family properties, and wars as 
but a sort of lawsuits that determine their disposal. There 
passed half a century more, and all was changed. The 
masses were in motion ; the great interests of classes and 
communities were agitated ; and politics had become a 
desperate game, at which the people played deeply against 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



393 



their rulers, with happiness and freedom as the supposed 
stake, and at the close of which, filling into a true gam- 
bler's quarrel, they filled the earth with anarchy, violence, 
and blood. The series of these three great states of things, 
if we may so express ourselves, occupied two whole cen- 
turies. Individual experience stretched but a little way 
along the line. It could know, in its own proper character, 
of only one of the three conditions. Its borrowed recol- 
lections of a former state of things failed adequately to 
mingle with its observations of a present state. They were 
not personal recollections ; there was substance on the one 
hand, mere shadow on the other. Men looked on a gray 
and silent past, through the darkened and colored glass of 
history, as merely curious inquirers ; while on the living, 
bustling, tangible realities before them they gazed through 
the clear atmosphere of sentient existence, as earnest, 
excited, interested spectators. 

Through that quickening of the wheels of Providence 
to which we advert, the case is essentially different now. 
Individual experience embraces the three distinct states ; 
and men in the pride of middle manhood, who have not 
misused their experience, know at least a little of each. 
The intrigues of mere individuals form no inconsiderable 
portion of our country's history during the reign of George 
IV. ; so much so, that from the trial of Caroline to the 
death of Canning there seems little that may not be 
referred to the petty manoeuvring of diplomatists, or to the 
piques or partialities of the sovereign. With the times of 
William, however, a sterner element is introduced; the 
masses become the all-potent moving-power of the state 
engine, and for a time legislation serves but to index their 
wishes. A noiseless revolution then succeeds. There is 
a sudden shifting of scenes, a changing of actors, a thorough 
revival of principles, unseen, on at least the surface of 
affairs, since the times of the Charleses. The antagonist 
parties that at the Reformation shook all Europe with the 
violence of their conflict, rise in their most characteristic 



394 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



form, in the two great establishments of the empire ; and, 
though the contest at its present stage may be regarded as 
but an affair of outposts, the war has already begun. 
Twenty years nave thus repeated to us the lessons of two 
centuries. 

We are afraid it will scarce be disputed that the great 
political movement of the country has terminated in dis- 
appointment among at least the masses. Chartism, how- 
ever doubtful its evidence on other matters, testifies all 
too truly, by the very extent of its own existence, that the 
physical condition of the people has not been bettered. 
The election committees of the House of Commons 
demonstrate all too unequivocally that their moral charac- 
ter has not been improved. Xay, to state the case in neg- 
atives is to do it injustice. Indirectly, at least, the tone 
of our national morality has been greatly lowered. Whigs, 
Tories, Radicals, Chartists, are all alike in error, if ever 
before there sat a British Parliament based on so large an 
amount of bribery and corruption as the Parliament so 
lately called together under the provisions of the Reform 
Bill, and tc secure the return of which nearly a million of 
the people registered their votes. Are our religious strug- 
gles to terminate in disappointment equally marked and 
lamentable? — to leave behind them, even though success- 
fully maintained, no nobler trophies among our people than 
the pangs of an ever-accumulating physical distress, or 
the atrocities of an ever-sinking moral degradation ? We 
have formed far other hopes; nor are there indications 
wanting which serve to show that in these hopes it is not 
irrational to indulge. The signal success which in the past 
year has attended the several schemes of the Church, 
during a season of great depression and distress, is of itself 
a sign of encouragement. In tones more significant than 
those of speech, it reminds the class who, on the plea of 
"lacking leisure to do good," are solicitous to cease from 
the present conflict, that He who decreed of old that the 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



395 



walls of Zion should be "built in troublous times," can 
build them in troublous times still. 

It furnishes no incurious or uninstructive employment to 
run over the various features of the two great popular 
movements which have agitated Scotland during the last 
twelve years, — the political and the ecclesiastical. They 
present themselves to us as a series of scenes; but we 
shall lack time even for bare enumeration. In the " Vision 
of Don Roderick," the dead stillness is broken by the blast 
of a trumpet, and straightway the giant Destiny arises, 
and, striking down with his iron mace the curtain of rock 
which interposes between him and the future, all in an 
instant becomes violence, commotion, and war. We have 
a .similar recollection of the first beginnings of the great 
political movement. We stood, in a calm, still evening, 
early in the August of 1830, — only twelve years ago ! — 
beside a half-deserted seaport in the north of Scotland. 
A fleet of fishing-boats, bound for the herring-bank, mottled 
the offing ; a large French lugger lay moored beside the 
quay, with her huge brown sails drooping heavily from her 
masts in the calm. Groups of town's-people, mostly me- 
chanics, sauntered along the shore, or rested in front of 
the lugger, looking curiously on the foreigners. The 
entire scene seemed representative of quiet industry enjoy- 
ing a leisure hour amid the repose of nature. But "hark 
the twanging horn!" It was the post coming in. A few 
minutes elapsed, and then a newspaper, damp from the 
folds, was handed to one of the mechanics. How strangely 
exciting, how tremendously important, the tidings which 
it conveyed! "Revolution in France!" — three days' 
war in the streets of Paris! — the government over- 
powered! — the king dethroned! — the people signally 
victorious! Huzza! It was interesting to mark the sud- 
den effect, — the instant hive-like buzz that arose among 
the congregating groups ; the excitement among the 
French crew, none of whom could read English, but to 
whom, notwithstanding, the important newspaper was 



396 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



handed; the unnatural effect of their strange French 
pronunciation of the English words, as they hurried over 
them, made all the more strange and unnatural by the 
intense emphasis with which the words were accompanied, 
and which spoke so unequivocally of the overpowering 
anxiety to know what they conveyed. 

It was the first blast of the trumpet that had blown, and 
the whole British people awoke. There ensued a period 
of unquiet agitation and sanguine hope, — agitation in 
which all among the laboring classes shared, and hope in 
which they all indulged. Scarce any one deemed himself 
so obscure but that some of the anticipated good might 
reach him. There was at least some indirect advantage 
to be derived to him; his labors were to be less, or his 
remuneration greater, or he was at least to walk more on 
a level with the aristocrats of the country. The future 
historian of this stirring period would require no slight 
skill adequately to represent the general expression of 
society, if we may so speak, during its high fever of excite- 
ment and expectation: Some of the earlier effects might 
be easily anticipated. There is scarce a village in Britain 
that cannot point out its wrecks of the Reform Bill, in the 
forms of broken-down and dissipated mechanics and bank- 
rupt shopkeepers. Not that the Reform Bill was bad ; we 
see it interposed by the providence of God at the present 
time as a bulwark between the Church of Scotland and 
the miserable politicians who would so fain crush and 
destroy her. But, if not bad in itself, it at least led to 
much that was bad. The village trader, whose predeces- 
sors in business had gone on quietly, adding pound to 
pound, and had risen, on their hard-earned and honest 
savings, to the enjoyment of the accompanying modicum 
of respect and influence, found a different way to rise, — a 
way which the accompanying municipal reform, no doubt 
good in itself also, threw more widely open to him than 
even the extension of the parliamentary franchise. In- 
fluence, respect, civic honors, and authority, were the 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



39T 



rewards of his predecessors in business, if they but pros- 
pered in their calling. He, on the other hand, found a 
way to civic authority without prospering in his calling ; 
nay, of which, if he availed himself, all hope of prospering 
in his calling might be rationally regarded as at an end. 
He learned to canvass for votes on his own behalf, and 
rose to the dignity of a bailie. Pie learned to canvass for 
his friend the member, and enjoyed the unspeakable honor 
of handing the great man through the streets on the day 
of the election. He became eloquent on platforms, bril- 
liant at public dinners, skilful in the framing of resolutions, 
happy in the drawing up of patriotic petitions ; acquired, 
in short, the whole trick of public business, and, in nine 
cases out of ten, winded up his own by getting into the 
Gazette. A general unsettledness possessed the com- 
munity, — the unsettledness of salient hope. In almost 
every village there were two great classes, — the solicitors 
and the solicited ; and as the spirit of Young Reform was 
honest, enthusiastic, sincere, the soliciting class exerted 
themselves for the general good and their own individual 
glorification ; while the class solicited were passively patri- 
otic just for the general good alone. But the spirit of 
Young Reform became less honest as it grew older. 
Experience came to teach unwilling pupils that there lies 
but little within the reach of mere statesmanship. The 
over-toiled poor had to work as long and to fare as hardly 
as before. Periods of depression came on, as if there had 
been no extension of the franchise. The funded debt 
increased, as if the Reform Bill had never passed the 
Lords. Men became weary, too, of seeing a vulgar upstart 
aristocracy of cunning canvassers and adroit beggars of 
votes taking the places of the soldier and not worse 
burghal aristocracy, who had carried things all their own 
way under the ancient regime, and of finding that the new 
men, like the old, were getting places in the colonies for 
their sons, and places in the excise for their nephews, and 
the people meanwhile none the better. Chartism broke 

34 



398 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



off, indignant, and set up for itself. A quieter and tamer 
class crept silently into the opposite scale, and solaced 
themselves, when registering their tory suffrages, by call- 
ing them conservative. Worst of all, franchise-holders 
began to consider by thousands whether, as they could do 
almost nothing for the country by giving their votes, they 
might not do just a little for themselves by selling them; 
and hence the election markets of the country, with their 
ticketed oaths and priced perjuries. The generous romance, 
the high-toned enthusiasm, of Young Reform, evaporated 
as he rose in years, until at length, changing his character 
altogether, he sunk into a worn-out and selfish truckler, 
devoid both of virtue and the belief in it ; and thus what 
had been Young Reform became Old Corruption. 

Nor has the great political fever been more favorable to 
the intellectual than to the moral character of our country. 
A few contemplative natures there are that need no other 
spur to quicken them in the pursuit of knowledge than just 
the love of it. But it is far otherwise with the great bulk 
of the species. In the average intellect attention never 
concentrates save under the influence of some serious 
belief. And hence the superficiality of a merely political 
people. They catch up shadows of opinions, impalpable 
and unreal as those thin films which, according to the old 
metaphysicians, bodies in the light are continually casting 
off, and which were regarded as the direct causes of vision. 
They are less the recipients of knowledge than the objects 
on which a kind of knowledge is reflected, — mere blank 
tablets, athwart which a periodical press throws, like a huge 
magic-lantern, its fantastic and ever-shifting images. The 
period of political excitement created no thinkers. There 
was not enough of earnestness left among the people, after 
the first delirium had j^assed, to give motion or direction 
to their thoughts. It was Christianity through which 
the popular mind in Scotland was originally developed; 
through Christianity alone can it be awakened anew. The 
distracting turmoil of secular politics, with the accom- 



THE TWO CONFLICTS 



399 



panying excitement, has ever served but to dissipate and 
weaken it. 

From the ecclesiastical struggle we anticipate effects of 
a very different character from those produced by the 
political one ; and certainly the first fruits are not of a 
kiud suited to disappoint expectation. Both struggles 
might be represented, we have said, in a series of scenes; 
nor would the scenes characteristic of the ecclesiastical 
struggle form the less striking series of the two. — whether 
we choose to draw from the atrocities that impart to the 
resistance of the Church its character of stern necessity, 
or from the strange instances of discordant coalition 
exhibited in the motley array of her assailants, or from 
the courts in which bewigged and berobed law deals upon 
her its censures, in all the conscious bravery of horse-hair, 
white ribbon, and taffeta, and devoid only of moral weight; 
or. more pleasing surely, from the spectacle of earnest 
multitudes gathered together in her behalf, and prepared 
to assert her cause in its true character, as Scotland's old 
hereditary quarrel; or from the evening meeting in some 
rural hamlet, to which, from distant glens and solitary hill- 
sides, a devout and thoughtful people have gathered, to 
wear out the night in implorations to Heaven for her 
safety ; or from scenes of family devotion in many a lonely 
cottage, in which her name and her cause are not forgotten 
when gray-haired patriarchs wrestle in prayer with their 
God. 

Very much still remains to be done : but we accept as a 
token of good in her behalf the strengthening devotional 
feeling of the country, — the deeper tone of spirituality 
imparted to the ministrations of so many of her clergymen, 
— the great increase in the number of her prayer-meetings; 
nay, it is something, too. that Moderatism itself, provoked 
to unwonted diligence, should be attempting, with a hand 
stiffened by disuse, to trace out the line of duty. Instances 
are not wanting in which, awaking from its sleep of a cen- 
tury, it has half striven, in its bewilderment, to escape from 



400 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



its dreams of effete commonplace into the living realities 
of the gospel ; and we have high authority for saying that 
it is well Christ should be preached, even though preached 
out of contention. There is much implied in that marked 
increase which has taken place, during the course of the 
last twelvemonth, in the funds of the various schemes of 
the Church, and to which we have already referred. It 
conclusively proves that the controversy in which she is 
entangled has had no narrowing or secularizing effect on 
the minds of the classes most engaged in it; that its 
tendencies are of a directly opposite character; and that, 
amid harassments and perplexities at home, there has been 
more thought of our countrymen abroad destitute of the 
means of religious instruction, — of the poor benighted 
Hindu, of the long-lost house of Israel, of the young 
among ourselves growing up in ignorance, and of the old 
and middle-aged passing on in darkness to their graves, — 
than at periods when the peace among us was unbroken, 
and all our narratives of persecution belonged exclusively 
to the past. Nor are there proofs wanting that the effects 
of the struggle are good intellectually. Our litterateurs 
need be in no fear of seeing the country thrown back into 
a state of barbarism. It was in times such as the present 
that the humble peasantry of Scotland learned to foil at 
their own weapons the most skilful controversialists of the 
persecuting Church, and left their death-testimonies to 
posterity, to bear witness alike to the indomitable firmness 
and integrity with which they maintained their principles, 
and to the high degree of intelligence which they had 
learned to exert in the defence of them. " The severities to 
which he had been subjected," says Sir James Mackintosh, 
" had led Bunyan to revolve in his own mind the principles 
of religious freedom, until he had acquired the ability of 
baffling, in the conflict of argument, the most acute and 
learned among his persecutors." There is an important 
principle involved in the remark. It exhibits the necessity 
which stimulates to thought and invention, arising direct 



THE TWO CONFLICTS. 



401 



out of religious belief acted on by persecution, — a princi- 
ple the efficacy of which may be soon tested in Scotland, 
as of old. Meanwhile there is a degree of interest excited, 
which has already operated favorably on the popular mind. 
Men are falling back upon the past, with all its earnest 
feeling and deep thinking, who were content hitherto to 
skim over the cold superficialities of the present. The 
Reformation is recognized once more as super-eminently 
the great event of modern history ; and there is more read 
and known regarding it than at any other period for the 
last hundred years. It is a fact of some importance that 
our ecclesiastical histories have become the most popular 
and salable books of the time. 

"I have ever been an enemy to religious strife," said 
Lord Dunfermline, in allusion to the existing controversy, 
when throwing his entire weight into the opposite scale, 
— "I have ever been an enemy to religious strife." His 
lordship had gained a great deal by the political "strife," 
then well-nigh at its close, — influence, title, broad lands, 
and solid guineas; whereas by the "religious strife" he 
could expect to gain nothing. Besides, its cross move- 
ments had thrown him out in his calculations, and con- 
verted the last political act of his life into a somewhat 
ludicrous blunder. And so, as the singularly charitable 
advocate of the grossnesses of intrusion, and the singularly 
liberal detester of the just rights of Christian men, he 
looked very magnanimous, and denounced "religious strife." 
We have attempted placing the two strifes before our 
readers in some of their more palpable effects. Both were 
alike ordered by the Disposer of all things, and their time 
and their bounds set, with no reference, surely, to the 
antipathies or predilections of churchmen or politicians. 
Peace and war come alike from God. But it seems no 
difficult matter to say which of the two seems the nobler 
and more hopeful battle, or in which it is most a privilege 
to be called to contend. 

34* 



402 



TENDENCIES. 



TENDENCIES. 



PART FIRST. 



One finds but little difficulty in estimating the tenden- 
cies of a bygone time in the page of history. The events 
stand out in a clear light, portable in bulk, and arranged 
in due order. We see in what they have begun and in 
what they have terminated ; and arrive, with scarce an 
effort, at our conclusions regarding their general scope and 
bearing. But it is far otherwise with the tendencies of a 
present age. It is no such easy matter to estimate their 
strength and direction. We are too deeply interested in 
the passing events to appreciate them justly, or we are 
interested in them too slightly, and our indifferency has 
equally the effect of setting our judgments at fault. They 
bulk large or small in our minds, less in agreement with 
their own true proportions than in accordance with the 
medium of predilection or prejudice through which we 
survey them. We are too much among them, and too 
near them, to see them as they really are, or to mark the 
direction in which they are bearing us in their course. The 
current of tendency in the past, as exhibited in history, is 
a clear, transparent stream, that sparkles in the sunshine. 
As involved in the occurrences of the present, it is a turbid 
and sullen tide, with a sombrous curtain of cloud resting 
over it and on either hand, and with thick darkness before. 
The voyager finds it a comparatively easy matter to trace 
his course on the chart. The observations are already 
taken to his hand on the graduated margin, and carried 
carefully across by the reticulated lines ; and the ocean he 
is crossing must be a wide ocean indeed if he does not see 
the land which he has left a very few inches astern x>f him, 
and the land to which he is going a very few inches ahead. 
But it is a quite different matter to trace his course over 



TENDENCIES. 



408 



the broad and living sea, with its tossing waves and its 
perplexing currents, when the distant horizon sinks all 
around him over a trackless waste of waters, and he knows 
that far beyond the line of that wide circle, where sky and 
sea seem to meet, the waste spreads on, and on, and on, for 
hundreds and thousands of miles. And when all is dark 
with sleet and rime, and his bark is staggering onward 
before the tempest ; when wild uproar and giddy tumult 
reign below, and gloom and thick cloud darken the heavens 
above ; when no star looks out from amid the rack by 
night, and no sun shines through the thick fog by day ; 
when, amid the restless welter of the deck, he has lashed 
his pilot to the helm, and stationed his forlorn watch in the 
top, — he must be content to confess a lack of knowledge 
as certainly as a lack of power, and that he is in no degree 
less able to control the irresistible waves and winds that 
are driving him involuntarily on, than to say where they 
have brought him, or to what untried scenes of terror or 
peril they are hurrying him away. 

But however difficult it may be to estimate the true 
tendencies of a present age, it is all-important that they 
should be estimated; just as it is all-important to the 
voyager in the storm that he should know where he is, and 
to what coast he is driving. And it is peculiarly important 
in an age like the present, when the powers of good and 
evil seem as if mustering their forces for some signal 
struofgde. 

QG 

We are told by chivalrous old Barbour, in his " Acts 
and Achievements of the Bruce," that when 

" Sir Aymer and Johne of Lome, 
Chasit the kinge with hounde and home," 

the pursuing body despatched five of their lightest and 
most active men to overtake the hard-pressed warrior, then 
in full view, and to detain and hold him at bay until the 
coming up of the rest. And overtake and bring him 



404 



TENDENCIES. 



to bay they did. But ere the main force of Lome and Sir 
Aymer could reach the green holm in which he had turned 
on his pursuers, the sward was cumbered by five bleeding 
and mutilated corpses, and the formidable fugitive had 
again shot far ahead. The Church of Scotland has not 
fared so well. The Voluntary controversy overtook her 
in her course during the dominancy of a whig ministry, 
and had unquestionably strength enough to keep her at 
bay during a time which she could have employed, had she 
not been so entangled, as peculiarly opportune and favor- 
able for securing her safety. Placed in an eminently pop- 
ular position, and warmly supported by her lay members, 
who felt that her quarrel was in reality theirs, she had to 
deal with a government whose only mode of estimating 
the importance of religion was by determining the votes 
that it could command, and to whom, with more than the 
emphasis of the old proverb, " the voice of the people was 
the voice of God." The religious element, in its character 
as such, never entered into their calculations. If the popu- 
lar power of Scotch Voluntaryism mustered as twenty, 
and the popular power of the Scotch Establishment as 
twenty-one, they would just have subtracted the lesser 
from the larger sum, and have given the Church the benefit 
of the balance. Every vote against her was regarded as a 
positive deduction from the justice of her claims. And it 
was under a government of this character that the Volun- 
tary controversy broke out, to divide the popular forces of 
the country, and to place our rulers for the time in the cir- 
cumstances of the ass between the two bundles of hay. 
Let political Voluntaries assert what they may, the con- 
troversy is now dead — dead as any of the five hapless pur- 
suers of the Bruce, who, like evangelic Dissent in this 
instance, were so active to their own hurt. But it is all too 
apparent that, ere it sunk into utter weakness and died, it 
accomplished its work. It entangled and detained the 
Church at a time when otherwise she would have been 
employed in making secure her safety through the popular 



TENDENCIES. 



405 



influences ; and, when thus entangled and kept at bay, 
other enemies came up. 

The same change of ministry 1 which had the effect of 
placing an already sinking Voluntaryism hors de combat 
had the effect of placing a much elated and sanguine Mod- 
eratism in what Moderatism itself deemed a position of 
great strength. It saw full before it a scene of triumph, 
— the return of the days of its old majorities, and of its 
high-handed and much-loved policy ; and all that seemed 
necessary to secure almost instant victory was just one 
bold stroke. Hence the unceasing exertions of Moderate 
influence with the conservative government to baffle all 
attempts at even an indifferently fair adjustment of the 
controversy. The Church, in her course towards safety, — 
a course that had now become much more dubious and 
uncertain than before, and which promised, humanly speak- 
ing, much fewer chances of escape, — had to contend with 
an enemy formidable mainly from the entanglement and 
delay that it occasioned. Moderatism had most certainly 
no intention of bringing down the Establishment. It is 
well aware how very miserably it would fare without it. 
TTe give our present Lord Justice-Clerk [Hope] full credit 
for attachment to the Scottish Establishment, and believe 
that, had he to choose between two great evils, he would 
rather see it Evangelistic than Puseyite. At this most 
important result, however, has the Church now arrived, 
and the question has assumed a new aspect in consequence. 
It is a point virtually decided by the resolutions of the late 
Convocation, that the existing controversy shall be either 
settled on fair, non-intrusion principles, or that the Estab- 
lishment of Scotland shall not be a Presbyterian Establish- 
ment. The second enemy that has entangled and kept the 
Church at bay promises soon to sink into a state of as 
great powerlessness as her first enemy. But it, too, may 
have accomplished its work. The great apostasy has been 
meanwhile rising into strength in England, and asserting 



l The accession of the Conservatives to power in 1841. 



406 



TENDENCIES. 



its place as the master principle of that kingdom. It was 
powerless at the time when Voluntaryism contended with 
our Church. When Moderatism contended with her, its 
joints were still unknit, its muscles undeveloped, its 
strength rather prospective than actual. But it is an im- 
mensely stronger principle now. The Church has been 
detained and entangled in her course by antagonists much 
indeed her inferiors in prowess; but ere she has succeeded 
in fully mastering them, it would seem as if the main body 
of the enemy had come up. How strange if, in the revo- 
lutions of those cloud-enveloped and mysteriously-compli- 
cated wheels of Providence which the prophet in vision 
saw, the eflbrts of Voluntaries, many of them truly Chris- 
tian men, and the active hostility of Moderates, men 
at least hostile to superstition and to the dogmas of the 
"malignant Church," should turn out to be but mere 
diversions, made all blindly and unwittingly in favor of 
the great apostasy ! 

There can be at least little rational doubt that Puseyism 
will now exert an influence on the adjustment of our 
Scottish Church question which at an earlier period it 
could not have exerted. When Voluntaryism began its 
opposition, Puseyism had no existence ; when Moderatism 
began its opposition, Puseyism was comparatively weak. 
Nay, independently of both, the Church, in her present 
position, had she been but prepared to take it up, might 
have very possibly compelled a fair and liberal settlement 
from Conservatism when Sir Robert Peel entered upon 
office, or from Liberalism ere Lord Melbourne quitted it. 
Neither of these statesmen, left to themselves, could have 
contemplated for a moment the disestablishment of the 
national religion of Scotland, with all the long train of 
evils which such an event must of necessity draw along 
with it, as a thing to be permitted in any circumstances. 
But a new party has become strong in the political field, 
that, through the disturbing influence of an element of 
religious belief, will be wholly incapable of estimating 



TENDENCIES. 



407 



these evils aright. We say an element of religious belief. 
It is common to all sincere religionists, whether their 
creed be a true or a false one, to " hope against hope," — 
to hope at least against probability, — to shut their eyes 
to what seem the teachings of experience in cases in which 
these teachings run counter to some promise of their 
religion, and to open them to the promise only. We 
believe, as Christians, for instance, that the knowledge 
of the Lord shall one day cover the whole earth. Why ? 
Do we find grounds for any such belief in either the pres- 
ent state of things or in the world's past history ? Very 
slight grounds indeed. If we see true churches springing 
up in one part of the globe, do we not see them dying 
out in another? Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands have 
their Christianity. Yes; but what has become of the 
Seven Churches of Asia ? America has had her revivals. 
Yes ; but how much of the living religion of the Reforma- 
tion is now to be found on the Continent of Europe? 
We do not found our belief in the ultimate triumph of our 
religion on the evidence of history, or on a survey of the 
present prospects of society. We have a much better foun- 
dation ; we ground it on the promise of our God. And, 
let the probabilities run as they may, it is a belief which 
we shall therefore continue to hold fast. Now false, like 
true churches, have their beliefs, firmly held after this 
fashion, which run counter to the probabilities ; nor can 
there be elements that more disturb calculations, or that 
lead to the perpetration of greater follies and crimes. 
Puseyism indulges in them ; nor has there been any lack 
of indication regarding the points on which they are con- 
centrated. There is not one of our readers more thor- 
oughly based in the belief that China, Or Hindustan, or 
the Persian empire, shall be one day Christian, than 
Puseyism is grounded in the belief that Scotland shall 
be one day Puseyite. It is formidable, in a crisis like the 
present, to have to come in contact with such a principle. 
The rational weighers of probabilities are easily dealt 



408 



TENDENCIES. 



with ; not so the blind hopers against hope. Men of 
expediency, such as Sir Robert Peel, — men less in danger 
of believing anything they don't see than of doubting 
when they ought to believe, — will find no difficulty, as 
we have said, in at least estimating the circumstances in 
which our country is at present placed. Sir Robert, two 
years ago, would have acted in due accordance with such 
an estimate. But it is at least questionable whether the 
expediency party which he represents is powerful enough 
to act upon it now. The hopers against hope — the bigots 
who " believe because it is impossible " — muster strong 
in the rear of our statesmen of mere expediency. Their 
influence to disturb, disarrange, disappoint, is great, and 
will, we doubt not, be vigorously exerted. We have to 
expect, in consequence, we are afraid, much wilful mis- 
representation, much intentional misapprehension, much 
exaggeration of our claims as unreasonable and absurd, 
much insinuation that our designs are selfish and dis- 
honest; delays ingeniously spun out to wear us down; 
perhaps a bill meanly equivocal in phrase, framed inten- 
tionally to palter in a double sense; perhaps no bill at all. 

If such be the state and apparent tendency of things, 
what course ought the Church to pursue? Is it at once 
her interest and her duty vigorously to persevere in form- 
ing her congregational associations, and in securing every- 
where the adherence of her people ? Her better consola- 
tions and encouragements are to be derived from the 
highest of all sources; but there can be no harm in 
remembering, besides, that if there be powerful principles 
opposed to her, the principles for which she has to con- 
tend have been, ever since the Reformation at least, by 
much the strongest in Scotland. "It matters not," says 
Carlyle, in his quaint but striking manner, — " it matters 
not though a thing be a small thing; if it be a true thing 
it will grow." Cromwell and Napoleon were once puny 
infants. But there was a principle of life in them, and of 
undeveloped power; and so they both grew up to be very 



TENDENCIES. 



409 



great men. Rather more than a century ago. Moderatisra 
east out of the Church of Scotland four clergymen. A 
small matter, it may be thought. Yes: small in much 
the same way that the infant Cromwell and the infant 
Napoleon were small. The transaction involved one of 
the principles of our present controversy. The thing was 
a small thing in itself, bat then it embodied a great and 
true principle, and so the small thing grew. And in the 
present day. the four rejected clergymen are represented 
by live hundred clergymen and by live hundred thousand 
people. If the worst comes to the worst with the Church 
of Scotland, she bids fair to begin her course, not as a 
small, but as a very great thing. — to begin with the live 
hundred ministers and the five hundred thousand people. 
And to the life-imparting, growth-securing principle of 
the Secession, she adds another master-principle whose 
strength has also been amply tested in Scotland. The 
contendings of the Secession in the last century involved 
mainly the non-intrusion principle. The contendings of 
our Presbyterian lathers in the previous century involved, 
mainly, the great doctrine that Christ is the only Head of 
the Church, and that, in the things which pertain to his 
kingdom, she owns no king or lord but him. And in our 
present struggle both these principles of strength are 
united. TVe have glanced, however, at but a small portion 
of our subject: it is of great extent, and as important as 
extensive : and we shall embrace an early opportunity of 
returning to it. 



PAET SECOND. 



It is a widely-spread belief of the present time, and 
certainly one of its not less striking characteristics, that 
the men of the passing generation are to be the spectators 
of a series of stranger changes and more remarkable revo- 
lutions than have been witnessed in almost any former 

35 



410 



TENDENCIES. 



period of the world's history. We say, widely spread. It 
is a belief that professes to be founded on Scripture, and 
has, in consequence, one set of limits in the far-diffused 
infidelity of the masses. Nay, more, it professes to be 
founded on an interpretation of Scripture exclusively 
Protestant, and has thus another set of limits in the super- 
stitions of Puseyism and Popery, that still further restrict 
its area. But outside these lines of boundary, inevitable 
in the present state of Christendom, — outside of infidelity 
on the one hand, and of Popery and Puseyism on the 
other, — it may well be described as a belief extensively 
diffused. There is scarce a country in the world in which 
Protestantism exists as a living faith, from America to Aus- 
tralia, and from Australia to Great Britain, in which it does 
not exist. There is scarce a Protestant body, from the 
Episcopalian to the Independent, from the Baptist to the 
Presbyterian, in which it has not its zealous assertors. It 
may be found in minds of almost every calibre, — in union, 
in some instances, with great doctrinal extravagances, and 
active, ill-regulated imaginations, — united, in others, to 
codes of belief soundly orthodox, and to great general 
sobriety and strength of judgment. The extent to which 
it prevails renders it one of perhaps the more remarkable 
traits of the religious world in the present day. Beliefs 
of a somewhat similar character have spread not less 
widely at other times. A belief that the end of the world 
was close at hand had immense influence in stirring up our 
ancient barons and their retainers to engage in the earlier 
crusades ; but it was the belief of a barbarous and unin- 
formed age, alike remarkable for the credulity of a super- 
stitious laity and the pious frauds of an unprincipled 
priesthood. A belief obtained very generally among Pa- 
pists early in the latter half of the seventeenth century, 
that the year -1666 was to be marked by some great 
religious revolution and the coming of Antichrist ; and, 
through a curious coincidence, the Jews pretended, says 
Voltaire, that their Messiah was to come this year, — a 



TENDENCIES. 



411 



delusion which led in part to the temporary success of that 
singular impostor Sabbatei Levi; while in England, says 
Burnet, "an opinion did run through the nation" that this 
year was to usher in the day of judgment. But the belief, 
thus various in its character, and which is said to have 
originated in a vulgar misapprehension of the mystic num- 
ber in the Apocalypse 666, was restricted, like the other, 
to the superstitious and the ignorant. It is a peculiarity of 
the existing belief, that it is entertained by all our more 
eminent expounders of prophecy in the present time, and 
that the writings of well-nigh all the more judicious ex- 
pounders of the past bear upon it also. The Medes, Til- 
lingasts; and Flemings of the seventeenth century point 
direct in the same line with the Keiths, Brooks, and Bick- 
ersteths of our own. 

The fact is unquestionably a curious, and surely not 
unimportant one, in its character as a fact. It was curious, 
even as a fact, that a belief should have prevailed through- 
out the world, in the days of Augustus Caesar, that some 
very great personage was just about to appear upon earth ; 
nor was the importance of the belief lessened in the least 
through the mistakes and misapprehensions to which, in 
some instances, it led. It was no doubt sufficiently absurd 
in Virgil to imagine he had found the wonderful child for 
whom the whole world was waiting, and under whose reign 
"the serpent's brood shall die," in the obscure Salonius, 
the infant son of Pollio. It was scarce less absurd in 
Tacitus, in the following century, to hold that he had dis- 
covered the king "who was to come forth of Judea, and 
reign over the whole earth," in the Emperor Vespasian. 
But perversions and misconceptions such as these militated 
in no degree against the general basis of reality in which 
the belief itself was founded. It had its foundations in 
truth, however wrapped up in the empty and untangible 
obscurities of Sybilline prediction, or mixed with the gross 
and palpable delusions of an impure idolatry, or misdi- 
rected by the active but blind ingenuity of philosophic 



412 



TENDENCIES. 



historians or accomplished poets. And the incident of the 
eastern sages, as recorded in Matthew, shows ns that it was 
a belief through which, employed aright, the Saviour might 
be found, even by men outside the pale of Judea. This 
general belief of the period, so curiously handed down to 
us in pagan literature, was in reality a warning in Provi- 
dence to the whole world that the King of the world was 
coming. 

Now, we speak advisedly when we say, that not since 
that time was there any belief founded in prophecy at once 
so widely spread and entertained by men of such general 
solidity of understanding as the belief of the present age, 
to which we refer. It has no doubt been exhibited, like 
the other, in many a various phase of absurdity and delu- 
sion. All our readers must have heard of Lady Hester 
Stanhope, who died, a few years since, amid the upper 
wilds of Lebanon, in the full expectation that she was to 
be visited there by the Saviour in person, and who kept in 
her stable a horse on which he might ride. They must be 
acquainted, also, with the extravagances, in the same line, 
of the followers of Campbell and Irvine. They may have 
differed widely, too, from the peculiar views of the vari- 
ously-composed body known as the "Personal Reign Men" 
of the present day, and perhaps thought of the class with a 
sort of tacit reference to the " Fifth Monarchy Men" of 
the times of the Commonwealth. We question, however, 
whether it would be in any degree more wise to slight the 
belief in which these extravagances have originated now, 
than it would have been wise to have slighted the belief in 
which the extravagances of Virgil, and not a few of his 
contemporaries, originated in the reign of Augustus Caesar. 
The belief which furnished the Roman poet with but the 
occasion of a mean compliment to the reign of a cunning 
usurper, led to far higher results in the case of the eastern 
sages ; the belief which, operating on the crazed imagina- 
tion of a Lady Stanhope, terminated in but an insane 
folly, may be a very different thing indeed in the mind of a 



TENDENCIES. 



413 



Dr. Keith ; and we think there can be at least no harm in 
urging on our readers an examination into the extent to 
which it in reality prevails, and of the data on which it 
professes to be founded. There is at least nothing fanatical 
in the advice. It can be in no degree irrational to devote 
one's self humbly and prayerfully to the careful study of 
that portion of Scripture regarding which Christ himself 
has so emphatically said, " Behold, I come quickly : blessed 
is he that keepeth" in mind " the sayings of the prophecy 
of this book." There is but one book in the whole Bible 
to which the blessing particularly refers. It is the book 
on which this belief of the religious world professes to .be 
specially based, — the belief that the present remarkable 
pause among the kingdoms of Europe is but a pause pre- 
ceding some great hurricane, in which the very foundations 
of society may be unfixed, — that the sixth vial is now in 
the course of being poured out on the vast river Euphra- 
tes, to dry up its failing waters in the sight of peoples and 
nations that have peace given them meanwhile, as if to 
enable them the more carefully to mark the sign, — and 
that, when that sign shall be accomplished, there shall 
burst forth upon them a storm like that which the prophet 
saw in the cave, when " a great and strong wind rent 
the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks, before the 
Lord." 

The inquirer, in the course of his search, and especially 
when setting himself to examine rather the extent and 
varieties of the belief than the grounds of it, will scarce 
fail of finding many curious passages, — some of them, 
no doubt, very extravagant, some of them eminently 
striking; and the following passage among the rest: 
" When the beast of Rev. xiii. 1 is described," says a 
writer of the present year, "Ae has upon his ten horns 
ten crowns ; but when the beast of Rev. xvii. 3 is repre- 
sented as carrying the woman, he still has ten horns, but 
he has not a crown upon any horn." And who, ask our 
readers, can be the writer of this wildly democratic, this 



414 



TENDENCIES. 



fiercely revolutionary passage, — this passage that in reality 
outdoes, in its quietness, the loudest treason of the most 
ostentatious Chartism ? No democrat, no revolutionist, 
we assure them. It was written in a quiet English vicar- 
age, by a beneficed clergyman, — a man who, believing, 
indeed, that the present age will not pass before all the 
ten horns of the beast shall want their crowns, has yet 
evidently no other interest in the democratic spirit than 
that which he takes in it as one of the signs of the times. 
That such passages should be written and published by 
such men, must be regarded as one of the signs of the 
times also, and, we are of opinion, one of not the least 
significant. The phase which it presents may be well 
deemed extreme ; but, as one of the many phases exhib- 
ited by a widely-extended belief, remarkable, in all its 
multitudinous aspects, for its unity of general scope and 
direction, we deem it not without its degree of startling 
interest. 

But, in speculating on the effects of the disestablishment 
of the religion of Scotland, let us deal with the probabili- 
ties of the event as if no such belief existed. It is of signal 
importance, at a time like the present, that a conviction so 
widely spread should be carefully examined. If found to 
be solid, it may greatly influence conduct ; but it must not 
be permitted to influence calculation. There can, how- 
ever, be no harm in referring to the somewhat shrewd 
circumstance, that the calculations and the belief fill with 
revolution exactly the same period of time. He must 
know exceedingly little of the history of either Presby- 
terian Scotland or of revolution in general, who believes 
that our vexatious Church controversy is to sink at once 
into quiet whenever some five hundred ministers antl some 
five hundred thousand people shall have quitted the Estab- 
lishment. It is only then, properly speaking, that the war 
is to begin. Revolutions go commonly, like twin stars, by 
pairs. There is first a comparatively quiet revolution, and 
then a much more noisy one ; and the civil courts have 



TENDENCIES, 



415 



succeeded in accomplishing only the quieter of the two. 
They have succeeded in revolutionizing the constitution 
of the Church of Scotland; and when they shall have 
disestablished her, the work, so far as it is theirs, shall be 
complete. But the other revolution is still altogether 
future. The revolution of Charles I. was pretty nearly 
accomplished when John Hampden had been made to 
suffer fine and imprisonment in England, and the service- 
book of Laud had been introduced into the High Church 
of Edinburgh. But then came the counter-revolution, and 
it was not fully accomplished until a discrowned head, 
melancholy of visage, and with locks prematurely gray, 
had dropped with hollow sound on the scaffold at White- 
hall. The revolution of James was well-nigh complete 
when the refractory bishops had been sent to the Tower; 
the counter-revolution was not completed until after "Wil- 
liam had landed at Torbay. Charles the Tenth brought 
his revolution to a close when he had revoked and disan- 
nulled the constitution of France ; but it took three days 
longer, and a considerable amount of hard fighting besides, 
to bring to a close the revolution that followed. Such, in 
short, is the general history of revolution. Such, we are 
certain, has been its invariable history in Scotland in con- 
nection with the Presbyterianism of the country. The 
war, we repeat, instead of drawing near a close, is but on 
the eve of beo-innin^. 

It will be carried on under one set of circumstances in 
our country districts, and under another set in our large 
towns. Democracy has its strongholds in the one, Conser- 
vatism in the other ; and in the more democratic localities 
will the war be hottest at first. All the churches of Aber- 
deen connected with the Establishment will fall vacant 
in one day. With these, four-fifths of the churches of Glas- 
gow, four-fifths of the churches of Edinburgh, and, in short, 
in nearly corresponding proportions, the churches of almost 
all the other large towns and cities of Scotland. ISTor is it 
merely ministers that these churches will lack; they will 



416 



TENDENCIES. 



lack also congregations. Moderatism has spoken of its 
five hundred licentiates patriotically waiting on tiptoe to 
rush, each like an ancient Curtius, into the five hundred 
perilous breaches that are to be made on this occasion in 
the Establishment. But it has not yet said anything of 
five hundred waiting congregations. The gap made by the 
congregations must remain unfilled, like the gaps made by 
the Indian tomahawk in the cranium of Lieutenant Les- 
mahago. Now, it is a very simple fact, but a not unimpor- 
tant one, that it is the congregations who pay the seat-rents; 
whereas the patriotic licentiates, instead of paying the 
rents, will be able only to benefit the community by receiv- 
ing the stipends. It is also a fact, that in Glasgow, Paisley, 
Dundee, Aberdeen, and several of our other large towns, 
the magistrates receive the rents with one hand, and pay 
the stipends with the other ; and we are afraid it would 
scarce fail to put the good men somewhat out, should the 
inveterate old habit be so broken upon through an inability 
of finding employment for the receiving hand, that they 
would have to restrict themselves to the use of the paying 
hand exclusively. 

Out of the twenty-nine pulpits of Ross-shire, twenty 
would be left vacant ; and to persons at all acquainted with 
the character of Scotch Highlanders in the present age it 
is quite unnecessary to say what would be the nature of 
the ferment which such an event would occasion. Our 
Highlanders are a patient people : they have, alas ! been 
much trampled upon, and they have borne it quietly. But 
though a patient, they are not a weak people ; nor are they 
unintelligent. They have got names, in their simple, 
expressive Gaelic, for the two parties in the Church. They 
describe the clergy of the one party as " the ministers who 
care for their souls," and those of the other as " the minis- 
ters who do not." They understand perfectly, too, the 
true nature of a religious Establisment. They regard it, 
not as a pension fund set apart for the sustenance of a use- 
less clergy, but as a provision made for their benefit. It is 



TENDENCIES. 



417 



but a few years since a party of them, ejected from their 
homes in the north of Scotland, left in quiet sadness their 
mountain hamlet, on their journey to the sea-port from 
which they were to take ship for America. They had been 
previously ground down by the exactions of a needy and 
rapacious landlord, until their lives had become ceaseless 
struggles between want and hard labor; and the feeling 
that binds Scotch Highlanders to their native soil had been 

• in some degree weakened in consequence. But it was 
their native soil that they were leaving, and so they quitted 
it, as we have said, in silent sorrow. In their onward jour- 
ney they passed the parish church. It was the one part 
of all the country that was theirs : it was their only prop- 
erty. It was the only thing that the landlord had not been 
able to tax, until, like the hard-earned fruits of their labors, 
it had become his own. It was theirs, and they were now 
leaving it forever. A host of recollections rushed upon 
them, at once tender and sacred; and there, beside the 
much-loved building, and amid the ashes of their fathers, 
they lifted up their voices and wept. And it is men such 
as these that the revolution of the civil courts is now on 
the eve of robbing of their only property. It would be 
utter madness to speak of resistance. They will not resist ; 
their much-loved ministers have taught them better ; but 
let these twenty churches be thrown vacant, — let all 
the evangelistic churches of the Highlands be thrown 
vacant, — and the cause of the aristocracy in Scotland will 
count weaker from the date of the event than it had hith- 
erto done, by thirty thousand fighting men. Conservatism, 

• too, may give up at least the northern Highlands as a polit- 
ical field whenever it pleases. One of the first effects of 
the revolution in country districts everywhere will be a 
thorough separation between the intrusion landlord and 
the non-intrusion tenant. The political feeling never at- 
tained to great strength among the rural population of 
Scotland. It is the proprietary and the acres of the coun- 
try that have hitherto voted at elections. Landlords have 



418 



TENDENCIES. 



been in the habit of bringing the representatives of their 
estates with them to the poll, and their estates have inva- 
riably turned out to be of the same mind with the land- 
lords themselves. There is now a new element introduced, 
or, rather, an old element revived ; and our proprietary 
would do well to take the measure of its strength. " All 
for the Church, and somewhat less for the state," was a 
leading principle of the old Scotch whig, as drawn by 
Belhaven in the days of the Union ; and it will be found 
that the character still applies. But we are indicating, and 
that feebly, not so much the first beginnings of the war in 
our country and Highland districts, as the directions which 
these first beginnings are likely to take. We feel that we 
are only entering on our subject. 



PART THIRD. 



Is the reader acquainted with that singularly amusing 
and interesting work, the "Autobiography of Heinrich 
Stilling " ? Heinrich, a German of the true type, — for 
to a simplicity so extreme that it imparted a dash of 
eccentricity to his character, he united great natural pow- 
ers, and acquirements of no ordinary extent and variety, 
— had passed, in his eventful career, through many changes 
of station and employment. In early life he had wrought 
as a journeyman tailor in an obscure province. In his first 
stage of advance he had taught a village school. In the 
second, he had acted as a sort of mercantile clerk and 
agent. In the third, he had applied himself to the study 
of medicine, and practised with various success as a 
physician in a tenth-rate German town. In a fourth, he 
had added the practice of surgery to that of physic, and 
had learned to couch for the cataract. He had received, 
in a fifth, an appointment to a professorship of agriculture 
and commerce in a provincial academy. In a sixth, he had 
been transferred, first to one university, then to another 



TENDENCIES. 



419 



of higher standing and celebrity, and distinguished him- 
self by his lectures on the economical, financial, and statis- 
tical sciences. Continuing to practise gratuitously as an 
oculist, he acquired a degree of skill perhaps unequalled at 
the period over Europe, and became the honored instru- 
ment of restoring to their sight many hundreds of the 
blind. He rose high in fame as an author; did much, 
through the exercise of his very popular powers, to stem 
the flood of neologic rationalism, which, during the latter 
half of the last century, deluged the continent; asserted, 
in his writings, in opposition to the cold, inoperative Theism 
disseminated from France as a centre, that "God must and 
will be worshipped" in his Son," and that " in Christ, and in 
Christ only, is the Father of men to be found." And, 
after a long and singularly useful life, he died, about thirty 
years ago, in the possession of the esteem of all good men, 
with a long list of honorary titles attached to his name, a 
popular and influential writer, a leading professor of the 
practical sciences, a doctor of philosophy and medicine, 
and private aulic councillor to the Grand Duke of Baden. 

"We refer to his strangely varied and surely not inglori- 
ous career for the sake of an illustration which it furnishes, 
in connection with one of the more striking peculiarities 
of his character. As he rose, step by step, in his course, 
he was ever in the habit of seriously inquiring of himself 
whether he had yet reached the proper place to which 
Providence in an especial manner, as he thought, had been 
guiding him from his youth up. He had all along felt 
himself gravitating, through the force of events, if we 
may so speak, towards some unknown vocation, the true 
destiny of his life, — as the sun, with all its planets, is said 
to gravitate towards an unseen and mysterious centre, 
hidden deep in the profound of space ; and, believing that 
there awaited him some peculiar, specific work to perform, 
he was solicitously anxious at each stage to know whether 
he had yet entered on the exercise of it, or whether he 
might not continue to await the call of duty inviting him 



420 



TENDENCIES. 



to some other sphere of action. There can be little doubt 
that he carried the feeling to an extreme more in accord- 
ance with the peculiar mysticism of the German than the 
sober common-sense of the British character; but the 
doubt need be quite as slight that, in the great majority 
of cases, men err on the opposite side, and err much more 
fatally than Stilling did. It is much to know one's real 
place and vocation, — so very much, that half the blunders 
and mishaps which occur in life, including all that is ridic- 
ulous in the classes that shoot above their proper mark, 
and almost all that is most pitiable among the classes that 
shoot beneath it, occur just in consequence of their not 
knowing their legitimate sphere and proper employments. 
They fail to appreciate their true destiny, and make ship- 
wreck in consequence; just as those who failed to solve 
the enigmas of the Sphinx were destroyed by the monster 
as a penalty of their misapprehension. 

But why so obvious a remark ? It may be found not 
without its bearing, we are of opinion, on the present crisis 
of the Scottish Church. It may at least serve us to illus- 
trate what we might be perhaps unable to make equally 
plain without it. The disestablished Church of Scotland 
bids fair to take up a place not occujried by any Church in 
Europe since the times of the Reformation ; and it would 
be well that all sincerely interested in her welfare, and the 
work which in times past she has been honored to carry 
on, should not mistake it. We can imagine scarce any- 
thing more fitted to be fatal than a misapprehension of 
her true place — her proper employment ; and it is impos- 
sible not to see that there may in some instances be con- 
siderable danger of such a misapprehension. The question 
which, with respect to himself, cost Heinrich Stilling so 
much grave thought and severe self-examination, should 
seriously engage every member of the Free Church of 
Scotland with respect to her. What, in the present great 
crisis, is her proper place ? — what her true vocation ? Of 
one thing we may be assured : the separating process of 



TENDENCIES. 



421 



which her contest with the civil powers has been so re- 
markably the occasion, and which, in its various stages of 
involuntary classification, serves so strikingly to remind 
one of the testing trials of the bands of Gideon, bears 
reference to some very important end. We may be assured, 
further, that the work prepared for the parties which it 
divides will be in meet accordance with their respective 
characters. 

Among the prose writings of the poet James Montgom- 
ery there is* an exceedingly curious little piece, less known 
than most of his other writings, designated an "Apocry- 
phal Chapter in the History of England," which purports 
to describe a state of matters induced by the total ex- 
tinction of Christianity in the country. There are many 
curious incidents narrated in it; and one of the most 
curious is a sort of missionary enterprise, undertaken with 
the design of restoring the vanished faith, by the country's 
more prudent skeptics and more sagacious men of the 
world. So long as Christianity existed among them, we 
are told, they had been indifferent to it at best ; some of 
them had made it the subject of not very respectful jokes, 
— some of them had openly contemned it; but, now that 
it was gone, they suddenly opened their eyes to the start- 
ling fact, that a vast and irresistible mass of depraved, 
reckless, hunger-bitten intelligence was preparing to bear 
down upon them and destroy them, and that the only 
barrier efficient to protect them in the circumstances was 
just the Christian superstition. That barrier, therefore, 
they had set themselves determinedly to reerect. They 
went out to preach, says the poet, in " market-places and 
town-halls, and on oratorio evenings at the theatres; but, 
alas ! never having known much of the matter, and 
having cared less, — having the misfortune, too, of being 
pretty widely known, and of being conscious of it, — they 
drivelled so exquisitely, in their confusion, as to provoke 
at once the scorn and the wrath of the multitude, who 
presently silenced them with such missiles as were wont 

36 



422 



TENDENCIES. 



to be thrown on better men in the days of Whitefield and 
Wesley." 

Now, the incident is of course a fictitious one ; but it is 
not on that account without its large admixture of truth. 
It is true to nature, if not to fact ; and the country will by 
and by have an opportunity, it is not improbable, of seeing 
many counterparts to it among the real occurrences of the 
time. The residuary Establishment will find it as neces- 
sary to exert itself in behalf of a nominal Evangelism, 
when the truth shall have left it, as it was found necessary 
by the skeptics of Montgomery's "Apocryphal Chapter" to 
exert themselves in the behalf of Christianity. Moderat- 
ism will find itself in circumstances in which, for the first 
time, its very existence shall have to depend on its minis- 
terial exertions; and, for a season at least, violent exertions 
will be made. The dead body will be galvanized in all its 
limbs and features ; and if the wild convulsions and con- 
tortions fail to resemble life, they will have at least the 
merit of being exceedingly like possession. But the im- 
pulse, though more than sufficiently energetic in the com- 
mencement, will not, and cannot, be permanent. The 
stone of Sisyphus will return to where it gravitates. It has 
been well and philosophically remarked, that no man ever 
changed his true character merely by determining to change 
it. There is something more than the sheer force of resolu- 
tion required. And what is true of the individual is equally 
true of every body composed of individuals. Moderatism 
will set itself to work with, no doubt, a dogged determina- 
tion of working hard and long. It will strive for a while 
to transmute into activity, by sheer dint of resolution, its 
native indolence of character. It will set itself to propel 
the ponderous axles and pinions of the Establishment by 
main strength ; but that which should be the grand mov- 
ing power of the machine it will assuredly neglect. It 
will merely set its shoulder to the master wheels. The 
sole moving power of any Church, whether established or 
disestablished, — the only moving power, indeed, that is 



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423 



of the slightest value, that is not rather mischievous than 
beneficial, — . is that power which acts through converted 
ministers and office-bearers, with all the permanent efficacy 
of a fixed law. And as this moving power Moderatism 
neither has nor wishes to have, its exertions must of neces- 
sity be both inoperative and short-lived. The remark 
refers mainly to Moderatism of the genuine type; for 
mainly to Moderatism will the throes and spasms of this 
period of convulsion be restricted. The Quietism of the 
residuary Establishment will walk softly, according to its 
nature, — then, as now, appalled rather than stimulated by 
the disruption. Its Rowism will continue to halt lamely, 
like a patient with an unset bone. Its Politico-Evangelism, 
as if palsy-struck for the time, will cower helplessly under 
the consciousness that when a religious ministry has lost 
its character, its zeal comes to be regarded as but the mere 
ebullitions of an offensive selfishness, and that to remain as 
quiet as possible is its true policy in the circumstances, 
seeing that the more thoroughly it may succeed in hiding 
itself, the better may it hope to fare. 

Now, it would be much, we repeat, for the disestablished 
Church to know at such a time its true place and vocation. 
It will stand on high ground, and this not merely in tire 
eyes of religious men all over the world, but also in the 
estimate of mere men of honor. 

A clergyman, not a hundred miles from Edinburgh, who 
gave in his adherence to the resolutions of the Convoca- 
tion, felt, since the late discussion in Parliament, that he 
had taken a step of doubtful prudence ; and, sitting down 
all alone, with the glebe in his front and the manse in his 
rear, he resolved, in the first place, to let his signature in 
the fatal list stand for nothing, and to exert himself, in 
the second, whenever the opportunity should occur, in 
repealing the veto. Not quite satisfied, perhaps, with the 
resolution at which he had arrived, and naturally desirous 
of making up by the gratulations of others what was want- 
ing in his own, he bethought himself of one of his neigh- 



424 



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bors, — an Intrusionist heritor, — much a Moderate and a 
man of the world, who had sturdily opposed him hitherto 
in all his movements on the side of the Church, but whom, 
in the main, he had found respectful and not unfriendly. 

I must just call on Mr. , he said, and tell him what I 

have at leugth determined on doing, and that we are 
much more likely to agree for the future than hitherto. 
And call on him he accordingly did. But, alas! there 
awaited the poor man none of the anticipated congratula- 
tions. The heritor, unluckily a gentleman, and acquainted 
with the code of honor, though ignorant of the constitu- 
tion of the Scottish Church, heard him patiently avow 
his altered sentiments and resolutions, and then, seriously 

addressing him, « Mr. ," he said, " hitherto I deemed 

you and your party in the wrong ; but, though I opposed, 
I respected you ; and, regarding you as honest in your con- 
victions, I had pleasure in recognizing you as my minister. 
I must now beg leave to say that you have found means 
to change my opinion, and that I can attend your minis- 
trations no longer." 

We instance the story merely to show that there are 
points of a practical bearing in the existing contest which 
even mere men of the world can thoroughly appreciate. 
The man honest in acting up to his convictions, and who 
can make large sacrifices for the sake of principle, is deemed 
at least an honorable man by the numerous class ignorant 
of those higher motives which bear reference to an unseen 
world. With the members of this class, in spite of them- 
selves, the disestablished Church must stand high, — a wit- 
ness to the importance of truths little known or heeded, 
but which are destined, in these latter times, to grow upon 
the notice of the world, to constitute the' great watchwords 
of its terminal struggle between the powers of good and 
of evil, and to receive their final confirmation at the last 
day from that adorable Sovereign of all, whose right 
equally it is to rule over the nations now, as to judge 
them then. With the men who in reality know the truth, 



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425 



whether at home or abroad, the position of the disestab- 
lished Church will be better appreciated. The testing- 
trial has been protracted and severe ; the chaff and dust 
have been blowing off at every stage in the process. It 
will be a chosen and well-tried band that, at the last stage, 
now apparently so near, shall go forth from the Establish- 
ment, leaving behind them the residual culm and debris; 
and, let party assert what it may, the sacrifice ultimately 
will not be under-estimated. The religious feelings of the 
country will be on their side ; nay, the very consciences of 
their opponents will be on their side also, in the degree at 
least in which these consciences are enlightened and awak- 
ened ; and, as in other times, death-beds, despairing and 
unblest, shall yield an impressive testimony in their favor. 

Now, it would be of vast importance for the Church to 
be fully conscious of all this. In her new circumstances 
she will be exposed to peculiar temptations and dangers ; 
and there is nothing which, with the blessing of her Great 
Head, seems so suited to guard and strengthen her against 
these as a right apprehension of her true place and stand- 
ing. It would be well for her to know where her strength 
lies ; it would be well for her to know, also, in how many 
different ways it might be possible to make that strength 
less. The history of our Scottish seceders — so very preg- 
nant a one, that we much regret it has not yet been 
written in a style worthy of it, and which we would fain 
recommend as a theme not unsuited to the pen of the 
ablest and most judicious writer of the party, Mr. M'Crie 
— is full of instruction to the Church in her present po- 
sition. It reads its significant lessons also to the Church's 
opponents. What, however, we would specially advert 
to at present, in connection with it, is the important fact 
that the first seceders, goaded, no doubt, by that persecu- 
tion which maketh even wise men mad, suffered them- 
selves, in the latter stages of their struggle, to lose temper, 
and that, as a consequence of losing it, they lost also 
much of the power which their position would have oth- 

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426 



TENDENCIES. 



erwise secured to them. When thrust violently out of 
the Church, they carried with them the warm sympathies 
of all its better people. They had taken their stand on 
the old Presbyterian ground, and had maintained the 
ancient quarrel nobly, and in a right spirit. Though weak 
in the ecclesiastical courts, they were morally strong, for 
they had much of the strength of Scotland behind them, 
and the high-handed tyranny of Moderatism was exactly 
the sort of thing best fitted to strengthen them yet fur- 
ther. They failed, however, fully to realize the true nature 
and importance of their position. They quitted the 
Church under the irritation of defeat. They felt that they 
had been wrongously overborne and beat down, on ground 
on which, constitutionally, they had a right to stand; and 
we are much mistaken if their after mishaps and dissen- 
sions may not be traced mainly to their indulgence in this 
unhappy feeling. The same men who, during the series 
of persecutions to which they had been subjected in the 
church courts, had acted with uniform temper and judg- 
ment, lost all command of themselves when they came 
afterwards to discuss, in their free, independent synod, 
points of not the highest possible importance ; and, after 
a series of the most deplorable and ill-judged wranglings, 
they broke up into separate parties, that refused to hold 
all communion with one another. This lesson, we repeat, 
is eminently instructive. There is much which ought to 
be guarded against in the irritation which persecution 
induces. And there is another danger to be avoided, 
against which it is possible the first seceders were not 
sufficiently watchful. It is perhaps natural for men who 
have suffered for conscience' sake to feel that they have, 
as it were, purchased a right, by their sacrifices, to main- 
tain their peculiar opinions bluntly and uncompromisingly. 
The state induced is, for obvious reasons, unfavorable to 
a spirit of conciliation and concession, and hence, probably, 
in part at least, the unhappy differences of the first se- 
ceders. Men who had submitted to the loss of all rather 



TENDENCIES. 



427 



than yield to even the supreme judicatories of the Church, 
felt, afterwards very little inclination to yield to one an- 
other. Now, to enable the Free Church of Scotland 
rightly to profit by the teachings of history in this in- 
structive case, there seem to be but two things necessary 
— a sedulous cultivation, through the appointed means, of 
the spirit of her Master, and a right appreciation of the 
high place which she seems destined to occupy. 

The course of the Church is becoming plainer every 
day ; but, like every other course which every other 
Church on earth has pursued, it is not quite devoid of its 
shoals and quicksands, on which the unwary might make 
shipwreck ; and it may be found no unprofitable task to 
map out a few of the more formidable of these. 



PART FOURTH. 

It is of the nature of Protestant dissent in free states 
in which there exist established religions, to take its stand 
on the side of Liberalism. There are principles involved 
in its character and position that determine its political 
place, if we may so speak, with well-nigh the certainty of 
a fixed law; and it must be sufficiently obvious that if 
such be the tendency of dissent generally, the bias in 
the Free Church of Scotland cannot fail to be mightily 
strengthened by the peculiar circumstances of her situa- 
tion. 

In the first place, she must necessarily recognize her 
disestablishment as a consequence of a most unjustifiable 
revolution effected in the very vitalities of her constitution, 
through the aggression of the civil courts, seconded, in the 
narrowest spirit of partisanship, by the existing govern- 
ment. In the next place, it is impossible not to see that 
the persecuting influence will be brought to press hard 
upon her, especially in country districts, through the 
agency of the privileged classes, — the classes who possess 



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the lands and inhabit the manor-houses of the country. 
It is obvious, too, that there are points at which the resid- 
uary Establishment, backed by the power of the secular 
courts and the state, will be made to abut against her 
with harassing and irritating effect. Questions will be 
necessarily arising between the skeleton Church and the 
national Church de jure, in which the powers that be will 
prove themselves no impartial adjudicators ; and thus there 
bids fair to be induced among the adherents of the Free 
Church a spirit of disaffection with the order of things, 
through which they will be made to suffer. There are 
analogies, too, between the important spiritual rights for 
which they contend, and the secular claims asserted by 
Liberalism, which must exert, in some cases, a sort of fra- 
ternizing influence. The cause of religious liberty ever 
involves that of civil liberty also. For two whole centu- 
ries — from the times of the Reformation until the earthly 
principle, true to its original character, degenerated into 
mere license, — another name for tyranny, — and demanded 
not only emancipation from the rule of man, but uncondi- 
tional release from the laws and government of God also 
— it went hand in hand with the spiritual principle. With 
the return of the old circumstances — circumstances in 
which the pressure of persecution will be again felt — the 
old coalition among the classes who suffer will be again 
formed. In short, the inevitable tendency of the disrup- 
tion of the Establishment will be to increase the movement 
party in the country, by imparting, from causes such as we 
have enumerated, a deep tinge of radicalism to minds 
which, but for that event, would have remained under the 
control of the conservative influences. 

Now, what, we ask, with such a state of things in pros- 
pect, will be at once the duty and the interest of the Free 
Church of Scotland? Here is a powerful current, that 
threatens to set in athwart her course. How should she 
steer with regard to it? Exactly as the mariner steers, 
who, in crossing the Atlantic, takes into account the influ- 



TENDENCIES. 



429 



ence of the great Gulf Stream, and directs his course a few 
points higher than his destined port, in order to counteract 
its effects and make allowance for leeway. If the Church 
become in all her congregations what some of our Dissent- 
ing bodies have become, — a mere congeries of political 
societies, — she will inevitably make shipwreck, and perish. 
There is no more dissipating element in existence, with 
regard to all that constitutes the life and strength of reli- 
gion, than the political element. 

Let us look steadily at the matter. The Church, we 
would first remark, has been removed, in the course of 
Providence, from all temptation of making common cause 
with the whigs. She has scarce more to do with them as 
a party than with their antagonists the tories. Her friends 
and her enemies are ranked equally on both sides. Lord 
John Russell and Sir Robert Peel make common cause 
against her. The Church has been removed, we repeat, from 
all temptation of making common cause with the whigs. 
She has been taught, in a manner sufficiently significant, 
that her cause and theirs, however assimilated by apparent 
analogies, is not at all identical ; it is in no degree more 
identical with that of the radicals as a party ; and in the 
history of her struggle for the last three years, she has had 
proofs in abundance that Chartism is determinedly hostile 
to her. It would seem as if Providence, in the course of 
events, was shutting her out of that political field, in the 
mazes of which she might otherwise lose herself. If there 
be a perilous current threatening to bear her away in one 
direction, the breath of heaven is evidently swelling her 
sails in the other; and we think she would do well to 
profit by what must be deemed more than mere warning 
in the case, — what must be regarded rather as the com- 
pulsory guidance extended by a wise and tender parent to 
a child, which, if left to itself, might, in its ignorance and 
its wilfulness, go grievously astray. There is a call in Pro- 
vidence to the Church that she dissipate not her powers 
in the political field. 



430 



TENDENCIES. 



The subject is so important that we may be permitted 
to indulge in an additional remark or two regarding; it. 
If, during the last twelve years, any one lesson has been 
taught to the country with more point and emphasis than 
any other, it is the lesson that no one should trust very 
implicitly to any merely political party, or expect very 
great advantages from any merely political change. In 
the course of that eventful period we have seen Whiggism 
come into office in the character of a powerful principle, 
and ejected from it in the character of a weak and effete 
one ; and it must have required but ordinary powers of 
observation to see, from the peculiar data furnished during 
this time, that such must be forever the fate of Liberalism 
in Britain, until an age arrive in which the majority of 
both statesmen and the people shall be pervaded by a 
spirit of vital Christianity. A recurrence of cycles has 
been often remarked in the history of states and peoples, 
— cycles in which long periods of despotism are followed 
by comparatively brief and stormy periods of liberty run- 
ning wildly into license, and in which these are succeeded 
by long periods of despotism again. Chateaubriand has 
written a whole volume on the subject, — a sparkling, 
if not a very solid one, — in which he shows that all 
history is little else than a record of these cycles of alter- 
nate despotism and license. They form, if we may so 
speak, the gusts and pauses of the great moral storm which 
sin has raised in the world, and which must continue to 
rage until He who stilled the tempest of old shall, when 
the appointed time comes round, command it to be still 
also. Now, we have just seen one of these cycles revolve 
in Britain in a comparatively still atmosphere. Among 
a less civilized people, or in a worse balanced constitu- 
tion, it would have taken the more strongly marked form 
of a stormy revolution, preceded and followed by a state 
of despotism. In Britain it has been of a quieter and more 
subdued character ; and we may see in its workings, in 
consequence, some of the laws in which these ever-recur- 



TENDENCIES. 



431 



ring cycles originate ; just as we may see, through the 
unbroken eddies of a river, those irregularities of bank and 
bottom by which the eddies are produced; whereas, in 
the wilder rapids, where all is foam and uproar, we find 
the disturbing agents concealed by the very turmoil which 
they occasion. 

Whiggism, out of office in this country, and purified by 
being much and long in a minority, addresses itself, in all 
its questions of real strength, to the natural consciences 
of men, and finds a ready response among the classes in 
whom no selfish interest disturbs the free exercise of the 
guiding power with respect to the particular points agi- 
tated. Nor is the principle to which it appeals — the 
native sense of right — by any means a weak one, in 
matters in which it does not meet, in those who entertain 
it, with a sense of personal advantage as an antagonistic 
power. The cry, "Emancipate your slaves," for instance, 
was just the proper voice of this natural sense of right; 
and it was a loud and powerful cry. It procured eventu- 
ally the good which it demanded. Be it remembered, 
however, that it arose from men who derived none of their 
wealth from the thews and sinews of the slave. It was a 
cry in which the merchants of Liverpool or the planters 
of the West Indies did not join. And why? Did these 
men want natural conscience? or were their wives and 
daughters, who made common cause with them, less influ- 
enced by the sense of right than the other wives and 
daughters of England and the colonies? No. We are 
convinced it would be unjust to say so. They were per- 
sons of just the average rate of virtue; but their sense of 
right was controlled and overpowered by what, in the 
unrenewed human character, is, and always must be, an 
immensely more powerful principle, — the sense of personal 
advantage. And so the entire class — though on other 
questions of right and wrong that did not involve their 
personal interests they might and would have been suffi- 
ciently sound — struggled hard to prevent the emancipa- 



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TENDENCIES. 



tion of the slave. The illustration is pregnant with those 
principles which serve to unlock the problem of the 
political cycle. Let us but imagine the great bulk of the 
men who called loudest for the einancij>ation of the slave 
at one time, becoming, through some unexpected turn of 
fortune, slaveholder at another, — their possessory feelings, 
as in the case of the planters, converted into principles of 
greater strength than their sense of right, — and we have 
Whiggism before us in its character in and out of office. 
Its strength in the opposition is the strength of the natural 
conscience ; it becomes weak in office, because it comes 
under the influence of the selfish and possessory feelings, 
and because, in the average human character, these inva- 
riably prevail as principles of action over the conscientious 
ones. And be it remarked that this character of average 
virtue must as certainly be that of every merely political 
party numerously composed, as the stature of the members 
that compose it must, when thrown into the aggregate, 
and divided by their number, be of the average height, or 
their longevity, when similarly treated, be of the average 
duration. Individuals may attain to a much higher rate 
of virtue, — individuals may be generous, disinterested, 
much influenced by the better motives, and little moved 
by the worse, — but bodies must continue to bear the aver- 
age character ; bodies must continue to be moved more 
strongly by the selfish than by the generous feelings, 
until a period arrive when, through the diffusion of a 
Christianity not merely nominal, but vital and real, the 
virtue of society shall be elevated to the high level of the 
converted man. And till that time come, the political 
cycle must continue to revolve, like the giddy and restless 
wheel to which the Psalmist compared the wretched unrest 
of his enemies, exciting hopes to produce only disappoint- 
ment, agitating men's minds and arousing their passions, 
but leaving their characters unimproved, and lessening in 
no degree the amount of their unhappiness. 

Does the remark seem rather declamatory than solid ? 



TENDENCIES. 



433 



We are convinced it contains an important truth, which 
bears with no indirect effect on the true vocation of min- 
isters of the gospel. The Free Church of Scotland has 
nobler and better work before her than can be found in 
climbing the political wheel, and in seeing it ever and anon 
descending to the mediocre level above, to which society 
cannot permanently rise so long as its average virtue is 
that, not of renewed, but of unregenerate nature. She 
will have many temptations to cast herself into the move- 
ment party. It would be well for her to know that they 
are, in almost every case, temptations to be resisted. There 
is, in particular, one specific form in which, in at least our 
country districts, temptation bids fair often to present itself. 
In almost all the rural parishes of Scotland, the great bulk 
of the people will be determinedly on her side, and the 
great bulk of the lairclocracy as determinedly opposed to 
her; and where the large farm system prevails, and the 
political franchise is enjoyed by only some five or six 
individuals in a parish, and these, mayhap, all Moderates, 
it may be deemed desirable, in order to give her weight in 
the political scale, that the franchise should be extended. 
A species of radicalism threatens to be thus induced, at 
one, in at least its main doctrine, with the universal suf- 
frageism of the mere political radical and chartist; and 
members of the Free Church would perhaps do well to be 
on their guard against it. The true character of universal 
suffrage cannot be adequately tested by any reference to 
its probable style of working in a quiet Presbyterian 
parish, or to the moral and intellectual fitness for the 
franchise of our humbler classes, where best instructed, 
and most under the influence of religion. It must be 
judged with reference to its probable effects in the aggre- 
gate. The popular voice in the Scottish parish might be 
right; but the important question to be determined is, 
whether the popular voice all over the British empire 
would be right. We much fear it would not. Civil and 
religious liberty have long gone hand in hand, and their 

37 



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TENDENCIES. 



names have been so united for centuries in toasts and 
watchwords, that we can scarce mention the one without 
calling up the other. It does not seem at all unlikely, 
however, that there is a time coming when what will be 
termed civil liberty shall cease to tolerate religious liberty. 
The question bids fair to arise, Is a citizen to be denuded 
of his rights of Christian membership simply for acting in 
accordance with both the spirit and letter of the law of 
his, country? — a law constitutionally enacted, be it re- 
marked, by the people's representatives. And thus the 
case promises to be so stated, that the spiritual liberty of 
retaining in the Church's own hands the power of the keys 
will be deemed not only an aggression on the civil liberty 
of the subject, but an offence also against the representa- 
tive majesty of the people. The two liberties will be 
brought into direct collision as antagonist powers. That 
liberty which constitutes the beau ideal of the chartist is 
invariably of an Erastian cast; and the class, if such there 
be, who may long for universal suffrage on the Church's 
behalf would do w T ell to be aware of the fact. There are 
Voluntary spirit-dealers in Edinburgh that sell whisky on 
Sabbath under the protection of Mr. Home Drummond's 
act, and deem it a very absurd thing that their churches 
should have a different law on the subject. Their churches 
have a right to make the fourth commandment a test of 
communion, and in this right their religious liberty is 
involved. But it is Mr. Home Drummond's act that 
involves the civil liberty of the spirit-dealing members. 
A persecution originating among the masses on principles 
such as these might be a very terrible one. In her troubles 
hitherto, the earth has invariably helped the woman. It 
is not improbable that a time of trouble may yet arise in 
which the earth will refuse to help her. 

One of our main objections, however, to a course of 
political agitation on the part of the Church is the dissi- 
pation of strength and spirit, if we may so speak, which 
such an agitation must induce. The political element in 



TENDENCIES. 



435 



this country is rather a restless than a strong one. It acts 
vigorously up to a certain point, and there fails at once. 
The contest comes. Votes are recorded ; the stronger 
party gains ; the losers sit down under the disappoint- 
ment, to console themselves as they best may ; and this is 
just all. There are no great sacrifices demanded, and 
none made ; and a habit comes to be formed, in con- 
sequence, by no means favorable to those larger and more 
serious demands which in times of trouble religion makes 
on her adherents. It is a fact not unworthy of notice, 
that the merely politico-Evangelicals of the Church soon 
left her. They voted, spoke, and canvassed for her reform 
bill, the Teto Law, regarding votes, speeches, and can- 
vassings, as just the proper enginery of party, and then 
left her when a time of suffering arrived, because suffering 
is no word in the vocabulary of the mere partisan. The 
spirit of the ordinary ten-pound freeholder who records 
his vote in behalf of his party, and does no more, is an 
essentially different thing from that of the martyr ; and it 
is the spirit of the martyr that Christianity, in times like 
the present, demands. We would not have indulged in 
these desultory remarks, were the danger to which they 
refer less imminent. It can scarce be necessary to add, by 
way of qualification, that it is one thing to become a mere 
political society, and quite another to perform in the right 
spirit political duties. Many of the members of the Free 
Church must possess, as members of the community r 
political privileges ; and to these, as to privileges of every 
other kind, a sense of responsibility must attach. They 
must exercise them, and their voices in the legislature of 
the country must, in the aggregate, be found influential. 
In a constitution such as ours, the strength of parties must 
continue to fluctuate. There will be periods of action and 
reaction ever recurring. The cycles will revolve as before. 
In the commencement of these cycles, when the spirit of 
liberty remains still fresh and unweakened by the selfish 
influences, permanent advantages in the cause of right 



436 



TENDENCIES. 



will continue to be gained. In the commencement of the 
last cycle, for instance, the slave was emancipated ; and 
the friends of the Church would do well to possess their 
souls in patience, and watch, in the Church's behalf, the 
commencement of the next cycle. It is one thing to 
direct to right ends the political power of a party, and 
quite another to be carried away by it. 

But our subject lengthens on our hands, and there are 
various other points on which it might be well to touch. 
How ought the Free Church to deal by the residuary 
Establishment ? — how by the Voluntaries ? — how by the 
bitterer opponents among the lairdocracy ? What other 
dangers has she to fear besides the great danger of dissi- 
pating her power and lowering her character in the politi- 
cal field ? How shall she best guard against the growth 
of a narrow and exclusive spirit? and on what objects 
mainly should she concentrate her energies ? 



PART FIFTH. 

How ought the Free Church to deal by the residuary 
Establishment, and how by the Voluntary body? We are 
convinced that very great danger may be incurred by mis- 
taking the true course with regard to either. A war of 
extermination waged blindly against the one, or an equally 
blind union formed with the other, for but the purpose of 
carrying on that war with greater effect, could scarce fail 
to be attended with disastrous consequences to the Free 
Church of Scotland. Her strength would leave her in the 
struggle, and she would sit down at its termination, what- 
ever the result, in a lower and far less advantageous posi- 
tion than that which, when the disruption takes place, it 
will be assuredly her destiny to occupy. 

Let us remark, in the first place, that nothing seems 
more natural, in the circumstances, than that she should 
rush headlong into such a war. It seems quite as much a 



TENDENCIES. 



437 



thing to be expected, on the ordinary principles which 
govern human conduct, as that, in the hour of her ex- 
tremity, she should have yielded to the encroachments of 
the civil power rather than forfeit her endowments, and 
have set herself down degraded and useless, — one of the 
less respectable sinecurists of the state ; for it is as natural 
for a man to strike when he is injured, as to cry for quarter 
when he is overcome.- In the party who will continue to 
harbor within the Establishment, the Church must recog- 
nize of necessity the men who have injured her most 
deeply ; and the recent agitation of the Voluntary contro- 
versy must serve to draw her attention to the exact point, 
if we may so speak, at which the retributive blow might 
be dealt at least most readily, if not with most effect. 
There is a line of batteries already thrown up against the 
Establishment, simply in its character as such, conspicuous 
enough to catch every eye ; a numerous and formidable 
body lie entrenched behind these ; and all that may seem 
necessary in order to secure the overthrow of the be- 
leagured institution, in its miserably undermined and 
exhausted condition, may be just to join forces with the 
besiegers, and, with numbers and artillery increased in the 
proportion in which those of the garrison will be dimin- 
ished, attempt carrying it by storm. Independently, too, 
of this natural feeling of hostility, and of the circumstances 
which may well serve to direct it into the Voluntary chan- 
nel, the Free Church must inevitably meet with an amount 
of provocation from the skeleton Establishment which Vol- 
untaryism has never yet received from any Establishment 
whatever. There will be a struggle for the possession of 
the people between the Church and the endowed institu- 
tion, in which the latter, conscious of its weakness in all 
that constitutes moral and religious character, will call to 
its assistance the factor and the landlord ; the same coarse 
instruments of persecution which were employed in Eng- 
land in the middle of the last century against the followers 
of Whitefield and Wesley will be set into operation at the 

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TENDENCIES. 



bidding or through the influence of the residuary Estab- 
lishment in Scotland, against disestablished Evangelism ; 
and in wide districts of country the state endowment will 
take, in consequence, the very repulsive form of a sort of 
government grant for putting down the gospel. The 
Establishment will be recognized as an unsightly incubus, 
squatted in all its leaden weight on the very bosom of 
religious liberty; and the feeling for its destruction bids 
fair, in consequence, to mount very high. A war against 
the Establishment seems quite as natural in the circum- 
stances, we repeat, as it seems natural that the Church, in 
her hour of extremity, should have quitted her hold of 
her spiritual privileges, and clung fast to her endowments. 

But we can trust that the Free Church of Scotland is 
destined, to baffle the calculations of mere men of the 
world, however sagacious, on more questions than one. 
They have already seen her casting into the golden balance 
of the sanctuary, with its one scale visible to the material 
eye, and its other scale invisible save to the eye of faith, 
all her worldly possessions, and seen what to them must 
have been a mysterious and unknown quantity outweigh- 
ing them all. And we anxiously hope that those who, 
calculating on data such ,as we have indicated, trust in a 
short time to see the Free Church a community of Volun- 
taries, are destined to be disappointed as signally. We 
deem it of paramount importance, at a time like the 
present, that she cleave to her Establishment principles. 
We say, at a time like the present. We would have 
deemed it of great importance at any time, especially in 
connection with that testimony which the Church of Scot- 
land, in all her periods of trouble, has been so peculiarly 
called on to maintain, — her testimony for the Headship 
of Christ, not only over the Church, but over states and 
nations in their character as such ; and with this testimony 
we deem the Establishment principle closely interwoven. 
But we are much mistaken if there are not peculiar -cir- 
cumstances, in the present time, which conspire, on other 



TENDENCIES. 



439 



accounts, to render the maintenance of the principle more 
important politically than perhaps at any previous period 
since the Revolution. 

We do not take our place among those radicals and 
chartists of the day who can see nothing admirable in the 
framework of the British constitution. We hold, on the 
contrary, by the old-fashioned belief so well expressed by 
De Lolme, and so invariably entertained by all the more 
philosophic intellects of the last century, that the consti- 
tution of Britain is by far the most perfect which the 
world has yet seen. Many a favoring providence, which 
human means could never have effected, and whose remote 
consequences lay far beyond the reach of human sagacity, 
have conspired to render it what it is. It would be as 
impossible for mere politicians to build up such a consti- 
tution by contract, as it would be for them to build up an 
oak, the growth of a thousand summers. We need scarce 
add, so obvious must the remark seem, that the man or 
party who stands upon confessedly constitutional ground 
must have a mighty advantage over the man or party who 
stands on some unrecognized principle which one individ- 
ual may deem good, and another quite the reverse. One 
British subject holds, for instance, that the murderer should 
be put to death ; another, that death is too severe a pun- 
ishment for any crime, even for murder itself ; and the 
point of difference betwixt them, regarded merely as a 
matter of argument, leaves much, no doubt, to be said on 
both sides. But, for all practical purposes, how immense 
the advantage derived to the former from the circumstance 
that his principle is a constitutional principle! In the 
same way, how very great the advantage which the ten- 
pound freeholder, deprived unjustly of his franchise, pos- 
sesses over the mere chartist, prevented from voting 
. because he wants the qualification ! The freeholder can 
base his claim on constitutional ground ; the chartist can 
base his on but what he deems the intrinsic justice of one 
of the Five Points. Now, be it remarked, that the Volun- 



| 



440 



TENDENCIES. 



tary principle is not a constitutional principle ; it is less so 
than some of the Five Points even. It is as little so as 
that of the man who contends that the murderer should 
not be put to death. The Establishment principle is the 
constitutional one ; and there are battles in prospect which 
can be fought on this ground alone. And so signally im- 
portant do these conflicts promise to be, that the integrity, 
nay, the very existence, of the constitution, may come to 
be staked upon them. Let us refer to just two of the 
number, — one of these a highly probable occurrence, the 
other at least a possible one. 

It is far from improbable, as we have repeatedly shown, 
that the skeleton Establishment, in its time of exhaustion 
and peril, may call to its aid the Episcopacy of England, 
and barter its Presbyterial forms for that assistance with- 
out which it may find it altogether impossible to subsist. 
Now, on what ground, we ask, could the people of Scot- 
land raise their protest with most effect against a transac- 
tion so utterly iniquitous in itself, and so pregnant with 
disastrous consequences to the country? How best fight, 
on this question, the battle whose result may be found to 
determine ultimately that of the great battle of Protest- 
antism itself? As a Voluntary ? The Voluntary has not 
a handbreadth of constitutional ground on which to fight 
it. His quarrel is with establishments in the abstract, — 
a quarrel in no degree less alien to the genius of the con- 
stitution than the cause of the chartist. He could assail 
a Scoto-Episcopal Establishment with but the arguments 
which he has already employed in assailing a Scoto-Pres- 
byterian Establishment. Pie could but propose dealing 
with it as the chartist proposes dealing by the House 
of Lords. But in the event of an invasion such as we 
anticipate, how very different the ground which the assert- 
ors of the Establishment principle could occupy! The 
opponent of all establishments could appeal to but a sort 
of unembodied conviction, which he himself entertains, — * 
a something which hovers between an opinion and a belief 



TENDENCIES. 



441 



in his mind, and which would underlie, of necessity, the 
insuperable disadvantage of being denied the status of 
a first principle. The assertor of establishments could 
appeal, on the contrary, to the plain letter of the constitu- 
tion. He would be placed in the circumstances, not of the 
chartist, alleging that he had a right to exercise the fran- 
chise in virtue of one of the Five Points, but of the ten- 
pound freeholder, asserting that he had a right to exercise 
the franchise in virtue of his ten-pound freehold. He 
could take his stand on the treaty of union ; he could take 
his stand on the unequivocal pledge embodied in that sol- 
emn oath which all our monarchs have sworn at their 
accession, from the days of Queen Anne to the days of 
Queen Victoria. In raising his protest, he could remind 
the advisers of the Crown that hio-h treason against the 
constitution is still a capital offence. He could caution 
ministers of the state — not in the style of a wild, blood- 
thirsty democrat, but with the sobriety of a British subject, 
aware of his rights, and determined to assert them — that 
they were in danger of rendering themselves amenable to 
the fate of Strafford. To political Churchmen, bent on the 
conquest of Samaria, and enamored of the principles of 
Laud, he could point, in no spirit of intolerance, to the 
bloody scaffold of the zealot. So long as Puseyism was in 
the ascendency, he could maintain against it, on constitu- 
tional ground, a war of appeals and protests; and he 
could occupy the hour of reaction, when that hour came, 
in tabling his articles of impeachment for high crimes and 
misdemeanors against the constitution. Surely, a vantage- 
ground of such mighty importance is not, at a time like 
the present, to be lightly abandoned. 

Let us advert to just one point more. If Popery be not 
destined to rise in this country, and become for a time the 
dominant power, not a few of the country's best and most 
sagacious men have greatly misunderstood the mind of 
God as revealed in prophecy. And certainly not since the 
days of James VII. did its rise seem more probable, from 



442 



TENDENCIES. 



causes in actual operation, than at the present time. It is 
of importance, surely, in preparing for the coming contest, 
that those remaining ramparts of the constitution which 
were reared with a direct view to it — reared to bear 
point-blank against Popery — should at least not be suf- 
fered to fall into a state of dilapidation and decay ; and, 
among these, where shall we find a bulwark half so impor- 
tant as that which the doctrine of the Protestant Succes- 
sion furnishes ? Hume himself — a man not at all apt to 
be biased in his judgments by religious predilections — has 
characterized this doctrine as a leading one in the consti- 
tution ; nay, as, beyond any other, the doctrine that fixed 
the constitution. He has described it as the grand expe- 
dient through which the long controversy between the pre- 
rogatives of the Crown and the rights of the people was 
terminated in favor of the latter. "It obtained," he says, 
" every advantage, as far as human skill and wisdom could 
extend." "It established the authority of the prince on 
the same bottom with the privileges of the people. By 
electing him in the royal line, we cut off all hopes of am- 
bitious subjects, who might in future emergencies disturb 
the government by their cabals and pretensions ; by ren- 
dering the crown hereditary in his family, we avoided all 
the inconvenience of elective monarchy ; and by excluding 
the lineal line, we secured all our constitutional limitations, 
and rendered our government uniform and of a piece. 
The people cherish monarchy because protected by it ; the 
monarch favors liberty because created by it ; and thus 
every advantage is obtained by the new establishment." 
The philosopher remarks further — and surely his testi- 
mony on the point may be received without scruple — 
that " the disadvantages of recalling the abdicated family 
consisted chiefly in their religion, — a religion prejudicial 
to society, and which affords no toleration, or peace, or 
security, to any other communion." Now, be it remem- 
bered, that we live in a time when, by an already power- 
ful and still rising party, this doctrine of the Protestant 



TENDENCIES. 



443 



Succession is covertly assailed, and the revolution through 
which it was secured assailed not so covertly. They 
already designate it as the rebellion of 1688. The conver- 
sion of the British monarch to Roman Catholicism, did 
no such doctrine exist, would be a glorious event in the 
annals of Popery. The rising apostasy would hold in the 
throne of the united kingdom such a post of vantage as 
the whole world could not equal. It has its golden dreams 
regarding it now, — dreams which, if destined to rise into 
power, it will assuredly strive hard to realize ; and the 
only constitutional point on which Protestantism could 
plant itself in its war of defence would be just the point 
furnished by this doctrine. But could Voluntaries occupy 
that point ? Could it be occupied by the man who asserts 
that religion is but the business of individuals, and that 
states and nations, in their character as such, should have 
no religion? Assuredly not. If religion be but the 
business of individuals, the British monarch, in his charac- 
ter as an individual, has a right to choose a religion for 
himself. If states, as such, should have no religion, on 
what right principle can it be held that states should deter- 
mine the religion of their sovereigns ? The doctrine of the 
Protestant Succession falls at once if dissociated from the 
principle of national religion. It is a doctrine behind 
which no consistent Voluntary can entrench himself 

We would fain press on every member of the Free 
Church the great importance of the establishment princi- 
ple. To lay it down at a time like the present would be 
such an act of madness as if a warrior divested himself of his 
armor on the eve of a great battle, and then entered naked 
and defenceless into the fray. It furnishes the only ground 
on which coming contests are to be maintained, and the 
cause of Presbytery and of Protestantism asserted. 

But it is one thing to hold resolutely by the establish- 
ment principle, and quite another to determine on the 
course proper to be pursued respecting some existing 
Establishment. The government, in its wisdom, has been 



444 



TENDENCIES. 



pleased to endow Maynooth. It is quite possible, how- 
ever, vigorously to oppose the yearly grant to that institu- 
tion, without being in the least a Voluntary. A Convo- 
cationist may hold firmly, on similar grounds, by the 
establishment principle, and yet set himself in determined 
opposition to the residuary Establishment. Be it remarked 
that, had not the latter been converted into something 
which he deemed exceedingly bad, he would not have 
quitted it. He foregoes its temporal advantages rather 
than remain in connection with it. Rather than acquiesce 
in the revolution which has been effected in it, by yielding 
allegiance, in matters spiritual, to the revolutionizing 
power, he gives up his whole living, and, thus resembling 
one of those French royalists who preferred submitting to 
voluntary exile to taking the oaths to the Convention, 
what principle is there to prevent him from resembling 
these royalists still further, by taking up arms against it? 
For our own part Ave are utterly unable to see any. If in 
reality revolutionized into so bad a thing that honest men 
refuse to remain within its pale, even though their whole 
means of living, altered in character by the revolution, 
be held out to them as a bribe for doing so, on what 
grounds could they be censured for making war on it? 
We have but one reply to the question, — we can see 
none. 

In this, however, as in all other things, it may be well 
to employ St. Paul's distinction between the expedient 
and the lawful. A war of the kind might be entirely just, 
but we are far from being convinced that it would be in 
any degree expedient. Unlike the Voluntary controversy 
in its principles, it would yet resemble it in its effects. It 
would scarce fail to assume in its progress the secularizing, 
semi-political form which would best consort with its semi- 
political character; and the deep-toned religious feeling 
which has, we trust, been strengthening in the course of 
the present controversy, would infallibly evaporate in the 
progress of a controversy in which the Free Church would 



TENDENCIES. 



445 



have a great many more hands to assist her than now, but, 
we are afraid, much fewer hearts to pray for her. Nay, 
that very assistance would be of itself an evil. It would 
mix up her people, through the influence of a common 
object, with Destructives and mere Voluntaries, — men at 
one with them in their hostility to the residuary Estab- 
lishment, but thoroughly at variance with them in their 
princijole of action ; and they would derive, to a certainty, 
no benefit from the contact. But one inevitable effect of 
the controversy we would deplore more than any of the 
others. It would surround, as with a wall, the residuary 
Establishment, and freeze within it — bind ujj, as if in ice 
— many a well-meaning man, infirm of resolution, and 
halting at present between two opinions, who, were the 
matter managed otherwise, might be solicited and drawn 
forth. Voluntary opinions were decidedly on the increase 
in this country some fifteen or twenty years ago. The 
Voluntary controversy broke out; men took their side; 
and from that moment Voluntaryism ceased to increase. 
The Free Church must deal more wisely; nor, in this 
respect at least, is her course a difficult one. There are 
strong religious sympathies operating in her behalf; she 
has but to throw herself full ivpon these by engaging heart 
and soul in her proper work, — the evangelizing of the 
country. It is a highly dangerous matter for two vessels 
to meet in rude collision in the open sea, — so dangerous, 
that there are instances not a few in which the effects have 
been fatal to both. But the loadstone rock of which we 
read in the Eastern tale, with its long flight of stairs and 
its tower atop, was in no danger whatever. It did not go 
out of its way to run down vessels ; it merely exerted its 
attractive power, while they were yet at a distance, in 
drawing out their nails and fastenings, and they then fell 
to pieces of themselves. The Free Church would do well 
not to set herself to run down the residuary Establishment, 
but to employ her attractive influence in drawing out its 
few remaining fastenings. 

38 



446 



TENDENCIES. 



If it be comparatively easy to say how the Free Church 
should deal by Voluntaryism, it seems a still more simple 
matter to say how she should deal by Voluntaries. The 
controversy is over for the time for all practical purposes. 
It divided many excellent men ; it divided also many men 
who were by no means excellent. Never, in this respect 
at least, was there a more unfortunate quarrel. It found 
the pious Churchman linked close to the Evangelic Dis- 
senter, and, tearing them apart, united the one to some 
malignant tory, — a mighty friend to establishments, but 
a bitter hater of the Cross ; and bound the other to some 
miserable infidel, not more an enemy to religious estab- 
lishments than to religion itself. There were strange 
unions effected on both sides. Of the five northern pro- 
prietors who have refused the Convocationists sites on 
their lands, three were such sound Establishment men 
that they stood contested elections on the strength of their 
attachment to the principle. And Voluntary journalists, 
who would have filled whole columns with frothy indigna- 
tion had these proprietors been Irish ones and the Convo- 
cationists Papists, have given a place in their pages to 
their insolent and repulsive epistles, without the addition 
of note or comment, as if the religious liberty of the 
country was in no way involved in the case. The fact has 
thus a double bearing, and is illustrative of the rubbish on 
both sides. Be it remarked, that the mingled heap of grain, 
dust, and chaff which the controversy gathered up on the 
part of the Church, has been thoroughly winnowed of late; 
whereas the corresponding heap on the Voluntary side still 
remains what it was. Providence has not yet seen meet 
to apply the fan, — an obstacle, it may seem, in the way 
of union. It is probable, however, that in thus speaking 
of a union of Voluntaries and Establishment men we 
make use of wrong terms, — we make use of terms of 
difference, not of agreement, — and fall into some confusion 
of idea in consequence. With the Voluntary, simply in 
his character as a Voluntary, a devout Churchman can have 



TENDENCIES. 



447 



no sympathy ; with a Churchman, simply in* his character 
as a Churchman, the devout Voluntary can have no sym- 
pathy. Voluntary and Churchman are their terms, not of 
agreement, but of difference, — their respective battle-cries 
when they fought against one another. It would be absurd 
tq dream of a union coextensive with their designations 
of difference ; it can be coextensive with but their senti- 
ments of agreement. It can be but a reunion of Christian 
with Christian ; not a heterogeneous coalition between 
mere Voluntaries and mere Establishment men. 



PART SIXTH. 



How ought the Church to deal by her bitterer opponents 
among the land-owners of the country? We very recently 
propounded the question, in one of our serial articles, as 
worthy of consideration. Only a few weeks have jDassed, 
and the hostility, whose scope and direction we could but 
anticipate then, has taken a determinate course, and become 
embodied in action. Events move quickly in these latter 
stages of the controversy, — so quickly that well-nigh half 
the anticipations of the " Tendencies " have been already 
converted into facts. We are continually reminded of the 
striking figure of that old poet who complained that the 
language was growing upon and covering up his earlier 
writings, as the flowing sea grows upon the sand, and oblit- 
erates and covers up all its tidal lines and all its ripple- 
markings. One northern baronet, who is an Episcopalian, 
denies the Convocationists sites on his lands because he 
himself is not a Convocationist ; another northern baronet, 
who is a philosopher, denies them sites on his lands because 
they weakly prefer the Assembles Shorter Catechism to 
the Catechism of Phrenology ; a third northern baronet, 
who is a Presbyterian, denies them sites on his lands 
because he has a thorough respect for them, and agrees 
with them in all matters essential. The pretexts are 



448 



TENDENCIES. 



various, but the overt acts are the same. In each and every 
case the rights of property are stretched to overbear the 
rights of conscience, and the principle virtually embodied, 
that the country's acres should determine the country's 
religion. 

Now, there must be something monstrously wrong 
here : property can have no such rights attached to it. A 
sophism in argument may escape at times the detection of 
even acute intellects; whereas a sophism in action lies 
open, from its very nature, to the detection of every hon- 
est mind. The common sense of mankind is sufficient to 
ensure its discovery ; and even were common sense to fail, 
common feeling would fasten upon it with the unerring 
precision of an instinct. The sophism in action never 
escapes ; and the practical sophism of our northern propri- 
etors, that the rights of property may be so stretched as 
legitimately to overbear the rights of conscience, has been 
already appreciated in its true character all over Britain. 
Wherever over the world the vital influences of Christian- 
ity exist, — nay, wherever there exists common sen§e and 
common honesty, associated with the tolerating principle, 
— policy such as theirs must be at once recognized as 
grossly offensive and fragrantly unjust. 

There is an element of strength in the circumstance that, 
in order to estimate aright the policy of such men, it is not 
at all necessary one should hold by the principles of the 
Convocationists. Our readers are not Papists: they be- 
lieve, on the contrary, that the conversion to Protestant- 
ism of the deluded adherents of the Man of Sin would be 
one of the most desirable events which could possibly take 
place in the Christian world. But not on that account, 
were the Protestant proprietors of Ireland to deal by their 
Papist tenants and cottars as our northern baronets are 
dealing by their Presbyterian ones, would they have any 
hesitation in making up their minds regarding the real 
nature of the transaction. It would at once appear to them 
in its true character, as an act of coarse and repulsive 



TENDENCIES. 



449 



oppression; and as coarse and repulsive must such acts be 
ever held in the common sense of mankind, whether the 
objects on which they are brought to bear be Presbyterian 
or Popish. 

In stretching the rights of property so far that they over- 
lay the rights of conscience, there is a monstrous sophism 
involved, which all can at least feel ; and the circumstance 
has served to originate many a curious speculation regard- 
ing the true limitations of the right of the proprietor, 
among a people never yet characterized by any peculiar 
obtuseness of intellect. And certainly the age of the 
Chartist and the Radical is not quite the age which a wise 
proprietor would choose for forcing such inquiries on the 
masses. The speculations which necessity imposes upon a 
people are generally very acute, and rarely inoperative 
in the end. We are told of Banyan by Sir James Mack- 
intosh, that "he foiled the magistrates, the clergy, the 
attorneys, who beset him, in every contest of argument, 
especially in that which relates to the independence of reli- 
gion on the civil authority ; for it was a subject on which 
his naturally vigorous mind was better educated by his 
habitual meditations, forced upon him by necessity, than it 
could have been by the most skilful instructor." There 
were many in the age of Bunyan to whom the despotism 
of Charles and his brother rendered such meditations 
habitual ; and when these reached their degree of ultimate 
intensity, like those fluids that crystallize at a certain point 
of saturation, they solidified into the great national act, 
which we are now accustomed to designate as the Revolu- 
tion of 1688. It is unwise, we repeat, on the part of the 
proprietary of the country, to force upon its people a train 
of inquiry regarding the rights of the proprietor, — espe- 
cially unwise at a time like the present, when there are so 
many disturbing elements to lead to extreme conclusions. 
Chartism has arrived at its own characteristic findings, — 
findings which it embodied last year in its great petition ; 
and were the infection to spread among the soberer and 

38* 



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TENDENCIES. 



more solid classes of the community, the effects might be 
fatal. It is of importance, however, — for the strength of 
opinion always depends eventually on the breadth and 
soundness of the foundations on which it rests, and there 
are sacred rights of property against which no man, or no 
class of . men, can safely transgress, even in speculation, — 
it is of importance, we say, that the people of the Free 
Church should entertain just sentiments on this matter, 
from which no insolence of insult, or no degree of oppres- 
sion, should be permitted to drive them. 

It was one of the enormous hardships to which the 
Puritans of England were subjected in the reign of Charles 
II. that " every Dissenting clergyman was forbidden from 
coming within five miles of his former congregation." 
Now, there are proprietors of the north* of Scotland who 
will be able, if they but carry their threats into execution, 
to prevent Presbyterian clergymen from residing within 
twenty miles of their former congregations. But, monstrous 
and tyrannical as such a power may seem, has not every 
man a right, it may be asked, to do what he pleases with 
his own ? and does not the power of the proprietor arise 
solely, in this instance, from just the legitimate exercise of 
this right ? Nay, not so fast. It is true, there are cases 
in which a man may do what he pleases with his own ; but 
it can be in only those cases in which the effects of what 
he does terminate with what is his own ; and not even in 
the whole of these. He may employ the bludgeon which 
he has purchased in any and every way in which that 
bludgeon is alone concerned ; but he must not employ the 
bludgeon which he has purchased in breaking his neigh- 
bor's head ; for, though the bludgeon be his own, the head 
is not. Nay, farther, he must not employ the bludgeon 
which he has bought in cruelly maltreating the horse 
which he has also bought. There are thus cases in which 
he may not do what he pleases with his own. The law 
takes into account not only the sense of suffering in the 
irrational animal which is his, but also the feelings of his 



TENDENCIES. 



451 



neighbors with regard to the sufferings of that irrational, 
animal, and fines and imprisons him for outraging them. 
The rule that a man may do what he pleases with his own 
is a rule of exceptions and limitations. Now, be it remem- 
bered that, though the acres of the north country belong 
to the proprietors of the north country, its religion does not 
belong to them. The bludgeon is theirs, but not the head ; 
and if they violently employ those acres to the detriment 
of that religion, they do so at threir imminent peril. Nay, 
by putting these acres to other than the recognized and 
legitimate use, they grievously shock and outrage the 
feelings of their neighbors : that they also do at their peril. 
If it be at all just to protect those proper feelings which 
sympathize in the sufferings of the brute creation, does not 
immutable justice decree that those higher sentiments of 
the soul which rest on the Son of God as their proper 
object, and those rights of conscience which bear reference 
to his law exclusively, should be at least equally shielded 
from violence and outrage? The rights of property can 
be but coextensive with the true ends and purposes of 
property. The possessor of a field tills, sows, and then, 
that he may reap the fruit of his labor, carefully encloses 
it; and the law affords him its protection by punishing the 
trespasser, just because the trespasser interferes with the 
true end and purpose for which property is held. But 
property is not held in order that the course of useful 
science may be arrested ; and so, when government is 
employed in taking a trigonometrical survey of the king- 
dom, it empowers its surveyors to enter the man's field, if 
necessary, and fix their theodolites there. Property is not 
held in order that an important branch of national industry 
may be put down ; and so, should the field be on the sea- 
shore, a herring-curer, if he can find no other place on 
which to heap up his fish, in order to get them transferred 
to his casks, may fence off a portion of it, and heap them 
up there, giving, of course, remuneration fully adequate 
for the produce which he may have trampled down, or the 



452 



TENDENCIES. 



general deterioration which he may have occasioned. 
Property is not held in order that great and beneficial 
designs may be successfully thwarted ; and so Parliament, 
if it see meet, may empower some projector or joint-stock 
company to cut a deep canal into the centre of the man's 
field, or to span it over with some vast viaduct, or to cut 
it asunder by some broad thoroughfare. The rights of 
property, we repeat, are but coextensive with the ends 
for which property is held ; and he who, on any pretext, 
stretches these rights so as to render them subversive of 
the rights of conscience, is guilty of as flagrant injustice 
as if he had had no property on which to take his stand. 
He is simply a persecutor, worthy the unqualified detesta- 
tion and abhorrence of mankind ; and his worn-out plea, 
that he has a right to do what he may with his own, is but 
a miserable sophism, in every way worthy of the deeds of 
wrong and oppression of which he renders it the apology. 
But it can scarce be necessary to insist on points of a 
character so palpable as these. 

It will not be enough, however, thus to remove the bars 
and obstacles which might otherwise prevent the current of 
popular opinion from dashing full against the persecuting 
proprietary of the country. So great is their power, and 
so many the means of annoyance within their reach, that, 
had the Church to maintain with them merely a political 
quarrel, she would scarce fail to be o'ermastered and borne 
down in the conflict, however unequivocally in the right. 
The tide of popular sympathy would set in too late and 
too feebly to avail her. She must not forget in what, 
under God, her strength lies, — that she has a hold of the 
religious feelings of the country ; and that wherever she 
succeeds in enlightening a conscience dark before, there 
also does she of necessity succeed in making good a lodg- 
ment from which the power of the landlord and the factor 
will be utterly unable to expel her. She is strong, doubt- 
less, in the popular character of the rights for which she 
has so resolutely and so devotedly contended, — strong on 



TENDENCIES. 



453 



a principle somewhat similar to that through which the 
whigs were strong when, after carrying the Reform Bill 
by a bare majority in the lower House, they dissolved 
Parliament, and appealed to the country. But were her 
strength of this merely semi-political kind, — were it based 
on but the popularity of her principles, — it would be a 
strength insufficient for her. It would evaporate in the 
furnace. The only strength which can ultimately avail 
her must lie in the unchanging fealty of converted hearts. 
"Wherever she is rendered the honored means of a conver- 
sion, there she secures an inalienable friend, fitted to abide 
in her behalf the day of trial. We have been often struck 
by the remarkable figure in the Apocalypse, in which the 
witnessing Church is represented as lying slain in the 
great city. The dead bodies of the two prophets are 
exposed in the street ; the sounds of mirth and wassail 
ring loud around them ; and there is rejoicing and giving 
of gifts because they are gone. What more hopeless than 
a cause sunk so low that its sole representatives are two 
lifeless carcasses, cruelly denied the repose and shelter of 
the tomb, and exposed to the heartless insults of an un- 
generous enemy ! They lie festering and dead ; a moment 
passes, and, lo ! c< the spirit of life from God has entered 
into them;" they stand upon their feet; overmastering 
astonishment and terror foil upon all beholders ; and in 
the presence of their enemies a great voice from heaven 
talks with them. In even her darkest day there are hopes 
to which the Church may continue to cling. The numbers 
and energy of her assertors will bear no chance proportion 
to the conversions of the country ; and one of those seasons 
of wide-spread and sudden revival which are, we trust, des- 
tined to characterize and bless the latter day, would have 
the effect of raising her up at once, like the resuscitated 
bodies of the slain prophets, a terror to her enemies, and 
a wonder to all. Her strength must lie in the conversions 
of the country, and her chance of success, humanly speak- 
ing, in directing all her exertions under an abiding sense 



454 



TENDENCIES. 



of the importance of the fact. It is, in truth, the grand 
secret, which her friends know, and her enemies do not. 

Ere we conclude for the time, let us add one remark 
more. The true way of utterly ruining the cause of the 
Free Church, when the crisis comes, would be simply to 
yield to those feelings of excitement which in some dis- 
tricts it may well occasion, and fly in the face of the law. 
Let the authorities be supplied with but a single act 
through which a charge of outrage and bona fide rebellion 
may be fixed upon the Church, and there will be means 
instantly exerted to put her down, which have not been 
employed in Britain since -the times of the persecutions of 
the Charleses. A few ploughmen, assisted by the bedraVs 
so?i, in Culsalmond, smoked their pipes in the parish church, 
and broke some dozen or a score of panes, and straightway 
a detachment of the military were marched into Strath- 
bogie, and there was a justiciary trial got up, at which an 
enlightened jury decided there was nothing to try. The 
soldiery and the Justiciary Court would be but imperfectly 
typical of the means which, in the result of some unhappy 
outbreak, would be set in instant requisition to crush the 
dissociated Church. The menials of Pilate and Caiaphas 
are coming out against her with their swords and staves ; 
but a too. zealous Peter must not be permitted to strike in 
her defence. It is essential to her well-being — perchance 
to her very existence — that all the outrages should be 
perpetrated by her opponents. It was O'Connell's most 
important lesson to the people of Ireland that they should 
keep their tempers and the peace. We would warn, in 
-especial, warm-hearted friends of the Church in the High- 
lands, — the fighting men of Scotland, — the men who, in 
not a few districts, are to be separated violently from their 
beloved ministers, and to see miserable hirelings set in their 
place, — that they may do much for her by their prayers, 
but nothing, and less than nothing, for her by their swords; 
that they cannot strike a single blow in her behalf which 
will not be made to descend with tenfold effect on her own 
honored head. 



mr. forsyth's « remarks." 



455 



MR. FORSYTH'S "REMARKS." 

It lias been made a principle in selecting these articles to omit 
those of a decidedly personal character. A vein of original and 
powerful humor entered, however, so largely into Mr. Miller's writ- 
ing in defence of the Evangelical party, that it was desirable to 
have some manifestation of it in the present volume. The following 
article conveys no idea of Mr. Miller's keener irony and more 
refined satire. It is in his roughest style, but, so far as it goes, it is 
characteristic, and it is believed that its broad humor can now be 
enjoyed without the infliction of pain upon any. — Ed. 

There has appeared within the last few weeks a very 
remarkable little work, on our ecclesiastical struggle, from, 
the pen of Robert Forsyth, Esq., advocate, an Edinburgh 
philosopher, who settled the principles of moral science 
rather more than thirty years ago, and who has now very 
laudably come forward — impelled by patriotic feeling 
and a strong sense of duty — to settle the Church ques- 
tion. He found himself " not entitled" he says, " to look 
on in silence." The mere capacity of doing good suggests 
always to well-regulated minds the absolute necessity of 
doing it; and so, while very many individuals who have 
not written essays on moral science, nor acquainted them- 
selves with the secret causes of the immortality of the 
soul, have felt that they had a right to maintain the char- 
acter of silent spectators, Mr. Forsyth, finding that he had 
no such right, — that he was not "entitled to look on in 
silence," — has been, of course, precipitated into author- 
ship ; and his pamphlet, which has the merit, as we have 
said, of being a very remarkable one, has already attracted 
the favorable notice of most of our Edinburgh contempo- 
raries. "A very excellent and seasonable treatise," says the 
Edinburgh Advertiser, and characterized by " great ability 



456 



MR. FORSYTH'S "REMARKS." 



and research." Assuredly yes, says the Evening Post ; 
"it exposes with equal profoundness and originality the 
illegal and dangerous proceedings of the democratic party 
in the Church." "The pamphlet of Mr. Forsyth seems to 
us an able one," adds the Scotsman / it "sets the preten- 
sions of the non-intrusionists in a very clear light," and 
" we would direct attention to it, as presenting the ideas 
of a well-informed, experienced, and religiously-disposed 
man." And the Observer tells his readers that it is a work 
eminently worthy even his notice, though, from a press of 
occupation, he has not been able to notice it as yet. 

Now, all this is certainly high praise. It has been often 
satisfactorily shown that the opinion of the Scottish news- 
paper j>ress is just the opinion of the people of Scotland ; 
of course, by parity of reason, the opinion of the Edin- 
burgh press must be just the opinion of the people of 
Edinburgh ; and here have we our intelligent and respect- 
able citizens, whig and tory, harmoniously at one in regard- 
ing the pamphlet which Mr. Forsyth has been so happily 
necessitated to produce, as seasonable, excellent, able, 
original, profound, clear in the light which it casts, and 
full of research, — and in eulogizing Mr. Forsyth himself 
as an " experienced, well-informed, and religiously-disposed 
man." Now, it would be, of course, absurd on our part to 
risk an opinion in direct opposition to all this. We may 
venture to remark, however, that Mr. Forsyth's pamphlet, 
though much more consistent than any other production 
which has appeared on the same side, and though, in the 
main, somewhat more amusing, has the disadvantage of 
being not quite complete in itself. Many of its more 
striking passages bear tacit reference to the doctrines of 
his great philosophical work, — reference so direct, that, to 
a man unacquainted with the peculiarities of the doctrine 
developed in his " Principles of Moral Science," his Church 
principles must often appear either altogether obscure, or 
in a very considerable degree extreme, if not irrational. 
And this, we say, is decidedly a defect. We hold that 



MR. FORSYTH'S " REMARKS.' 



457 



Mr. Forsyth's pamphlet on the Church question should be 
in every respect as independent of his great philosophical 
work as his great philosophical work is independent of his 
pamphlet on the Church question. Mr. Forsyth must be 
surely aware that, in this unthinking and superficial age, 
in which metaphysics languish, there are many men and 
many women deeply interested in our ecclesiastical strug- 
gle who have yet cultivated no close acquaintance with 
his " Principles of Moral Science." 

" The truths of Butler are more worthy the name of 
discovery" says Sir James Mackintosh, " than any with 
which we are acquainted." We infer, from the assertion, 
that Sir James must have been ignorant of the- ethical 
philosophy of Mr. Robert Forsyth. It was reserved for 
this man of high philosophic intellect to discover, early in 
the present century, after first spending several years as a 
licentiate of the Church of Scotland, that though there are 
some human souls that live forever, the great bulk of souls 
are as mortal as the bodies to which they are united, and 
perish immediately after death, like the souls of brutes. 
Thinking souls, such as the soul of Mr. Robert Forsyth, 
continue to think on forever ; but the vast rabble of souls, 
that either do not think at all, or think to little purpose, 
curl, and revolve, and expand, for a very little after they 
are exhaled from the body, somewhat like the pu£F of a 
cigar in a quiet atmosphere, and then melt away into 
nothing. Of what possible use, argued the philosopher, 
could the souls of the mere populace be in another world? 
In the present they are of very considerable value. They 
constitute a sort of moving power to the bodies of our 
artisans, clerks, and manufacturers. They j)roduce hats, 
and shoes, and broadcloth, and law documents ; they build 
houses, and keep shops, and makes sausages and suits of 
clothes ; but in the future state they would be of quite as 
little value as the steam or water power of a mill or engine 
dissociated from the cranks of the engine or the pinions 
of the mill, and sublimed to the dignity of a soul. Where 

39 



458 



MR. FORSYTH'S " REMARKS. 1 



there are neither heads nor feet there can be no demand 
for either hats or shoes. No attenuated tailor-soul will be 
required to take measure with his figured tape of the 
thinking part of Mr. Robert Forsyth, or to illuminate his 
disembodied sensorium with rows of buttons. He will be 
independent of broadcloth and of bend leather, and miss 
neither his clerk nor the butcher's shop. All must have 
heard of the famous argument once maintained between 
Corporal Trim and Uncle Toby regarding the souls of 
negroes, and how the honest old captain came finally to 
the conclusion, that if the blacks have not souls as certainly 
as the whites, "it is a sad setting up of one man over 
another." Now, a similar thought seems to have crossed 
the mind of the philosophic Mr. Forsyth ; nor can we 
imagine aught more suited to render a person of a benev- 
olent disposition uneasy ; but a further discovery served at 
once to remove the painful feeling. He discovered, by 
a singularly ingenious process, that the happy few ivho 
inherit immortality achieve it for themselves. They work 
it out simply by dint of thinking. The ploughman's soul 
does not sink into annihilation simply because it is the soul 
of a ploughman, nor does the shoemaker's soul perish qua 
shoemaking soul. They perish just because they have not 
been exercised in thinking, — just because they have not 
been writing treatises on moral science, or pamphlets on 
the intrusion side in the Church question. The sensoriums 
of a Burns and a Bloorafield may be living yet. If souls 
die, it is all their own fault. They do not take exercise to 
render them strong and hardy, and so perish the moment 
they step out of doors; just as children over-delicately 
nurtured and kept in an over-heated nursery are killed at 
times simply by running out into the cold. All the hardy, 
well-trained souls survive. But we are doing less than 
justice to Mr. Forsyth in not employing his own philo- 
sophic language. 



" From the capacity that is conferred upon the human mind of 



MR. FORSYTH'S " REMARKS." 



459 



advancing in perpetual improvement, we conclude that it is destined 

for immortality" But it is not to every individual that this 

capacity or this destiny belongs. Some minds are too undiscerning 
to perceive the value of intellectual improvement. Other minds 
become so deeply enamored of certain pursuits peculiar to their 
present state, that they will be unable to burst through the fetters of 
habit, and to engage in the study of what is good and excellent in 
the works of their Maker. These minds, having no employment in 
which to occupy themselves, would exist hereafter in vain ; and such 
is the constitution of mind, that if it is not employed, it sinks into 
thoughtlessness, and loses its intelligent character. But those minds 
that engage in the pursuit of intellectual improvement, or in the study 
and diffusion of science, when they remove from this world will find 
themselves only placed in a better situation for advancing success- 
fully in their career. Their employment cannot come to an end, 
for it is infinite ; and their minds will continue forever to become 
still more active, more discerning, and more enlarged. It is no 
mean prize, then, that awaits the lovers of Wisdom. She is lovely 
in herself, and worthy of all regard and pursuit ; but she is not given 
to man as a bride without a dowry. The possession of her communi- 
cates no less than immortal life. This is the highest prize in the 

great lottery of existence Let it never be forgotten, then, for 

whom it is that immortality is reserved. It is appointed as the portion 
of those who are worthy of it ; and they shall enjoy it as a natural 
consequence of their worth. This is a part of the plan according to 
which the Mighty Artist has formed the universe. Whatever is 
defective or imperfect, and has no tendency to improvement, will 
gradually pass away and disappear forever ; but the minds that shoot 
vigorously towards excellence will be cherished, and endure and 
flourish without end. And this is all that can be said with any tolera- 
ble degree of certainty on so obscure a subject." — Principles of Moral 
Science, 1805, pp. 501, 502. 

But though beyond this Mr. Forsyth did not arrive at 
certainty (and unquestionably minds of a lower and less 
philosophic nature could scarce have carried demonstration 
so far), he was enabled, through the exercise of that fine 
faculty, imagination, to go a very considerable way further. 
In an exquisite allegory, attached, by way of appendix, to 
the chapter in which his great discovery is promulgated, 



460 



MR. FORSYTH'S " REMARKS." 



we are presented with a view, singularly graphic and pic- 
turesque, of the expectoration of souls. The reader of the 
"Principles of Moral Science" is suspended in mid-air, 
with Mr. Forsyth, in the character of the " Angel of In- 
struction," beside him; and on the earth beneath he is 
made to see all the dying, brute and human, engaged in 
vomiting souls. The view somewhat resembles that 
which the adventurous sailor takes from the maintoj) of a 
crowded and tempest-overtaken transport, when horrible 
nausea occuj)ies the laboring passengers below. We see 
the " souls of dying men departing from their bodies," and 
the " souls of dying beasts." We mark the spirits of the 
beasts coming creeping out, like half-suffocated wasps 
escaping from the fumes of the deadly sulphur, when, in 
the silent twilight, some reckless urchin assails with fire 
and brimstone their devoted citadel, and then squatting 
themselves down in the open air, and quietly evaporating; 
or, to employ Mr. Forsyth's own classic illustration, "melt- 
ing away gradually, like the cloud rising from the river, 
which the morning sun drinks up." ~Not so tranquil, how- 
ever, the process through which the spirits of unthinking 
men pass into annihilation. " The souls of dying men are 
more active," says Mr. Forsyth, "than the souls of dying 
beasts, for they spring upward, and seem to look around 
them, as if seeking for some work wherein to labor." They 
come frothing out like small beer in the dog-days, just 
escaped from the bottle, and wheel round and round in 
uneasy and short-lived activity, like drops of boiling oil 
sprinkled from a dipped rush-light on the colder oil of the 
lamp; or like vivacious lady-birds stuck fast upon pins; 
or like the wicked old lady in Beckford's Vathec, the 
rapidity of whose revolutions rendered her altogether 
invisible. But, soon squatting themselves clown in utter 
exhaustion, they evaporate, " and pass away, and are for- 
gotten, and no trace of them remains." Very different, 
however, is the destiny of vigorous souls of profound 
thought and solid acquirement, — the souls that have 



MR. FORSYTH'S "REMARKS." 



461 



" engaged in the pursuit of intellectual improvement," and 
produced treatises on moral science. They " never lose 
their activity, nor fall asleep at all, like the rest." They 
visit "the sun, and the moon, and other worlds," expatiate 
at large over the whole earth and the whole sea, make 
their way into the recesses of Mr. Forsyth's study, and 
there acquaint themselves thoroughly with his opinion on 
the Church question, long ere his invaluable manuscripts 
have passed into the hands of the publisher. Well has it 
been remarked by this Edinburgh philosopher, that "it is 
no mean prize that awaits the lovers of wisdom." 

Now, without some previous acquaintance with this fine 
philosophy, there are passages in Mr. Forsyth's Church 
pamphlet the force of which cannot be adequately appre- 
ciated. And hence, we urge, the incompleteness of the 
work, regarded as a whole. The happy few who have 
mastered his "Principles" must, of course, feel themselves 
quite qualified to enter into the deeper meanings of his 
" Remarks." But why write for only the happy few ? 
Why not render his pamphlet as independent of his "Prin- 
ciples" as he has already rendered his " Principles" inde- 
pendent of his pamphlet? All interested in the Church 
question are not, we repeat, deeply read in the metaphysi- 
cal discoveries of Mr. Forsyth. And yet, what, without a 
knowledge of the great discovery whose results we have 
just communicated to our readers, is-the real force of a 
passage such as the one in which Mr. Forsyth sets himself 
to annihilate the Veto ? United to his discovery, it is all- 
potent ; dissociated from it, it is a piece of mere common- 
place. We quote from his pamphlet : 

" A young man," says Mr. Forsyth, " after employing his best 
years, and considerable expense, in a university education, and 
the study of the learned languages and of theology, would, according 
to custom, present himself for examination before the presbytery of 
his birth or residence. He is declared qualified to preach, and is 
allowed to preach for any minister employing him, Yet, on receiy- 



462 



MR. FORSYTH'S "REMARKS." 



ing a presentation from the Crown, or some other patron, he might 
find his prospects blasted, because a number of clowns had been 
pleased to say, without assigning a reason, that they dissented from 
his settlement, whether because they wished some other individual, 
or wantonly acted to show their power. Admission to the com- 
munion table affords no test of the ability of a man to decide on the 
qualifications necessary to a minister who is to instruct men in the 
history and principles of Christianity. A man may be a sincere 
believer in the gospel, and of the most decent life, who yet is truly 
an illiterate person, engaged in mechanical labor. To say that such 
a man shall have power to ruin the prospects of a learned man, 
against whom he can state no well-founded objections, is palpably 
absurd." 

Now, if this passage be taken simply as it stands, even 
Mr. Forsyth's warmest friends must be forced to allow that 
it is by no means a striking one. Dr. Cook has said as 
much, and Dr. Bryce, and the Edinburgh Advertiser, and 
the gentleman who in the Observer writes " Columns for 
the Kirk." But, taken in connection with Mr. Forsyth's 
great discovery, even the Witness itself must confess that 
it does all it was intended to do, — that it annihilates the 
Veto. Let the reader mark well some of the phrases 
employed: "Number of clowns," — "admission to the 
communion table no test of ability," — "illiterate person 
engaged in mechanical labor." These are all phrases of 
deep significancy when coupled with the discovery of Mr. 
Forsyth. In his "Principles of Moral Science" we are 
expressly told that "men who spend their lives in the 
unremitting drudgery of such kinds of labor as require 
little exercise of the mind, are aj)t to sink into a state of 
indolence and stupidity." "*They become incapable of 
thinking," it is added ; " and if at any time they make an 
unusual exertion towards it, their attention soon wavers 
and fails, and they speedily relinquish an effort that is so 
sensibly above their strength." They are, in short, men 
whose souls, like the souls of brutes, perish at death. 
Mark, next, the antagonist class of phrases used in con- 



mr. forsyth's "remarks. 1 



463 



nection with the licensed candidate : " University educa- 
tion," — " learned languages," — " theology, " — fitted to 
" instruct in the history and principles of Christianity," — 
"qualified preacher," — "learned man." There is an 
achieved immortality of soul implied in the very terms. 
The human souls that do not die, says Mr. Forsyth, in his 
" Principles," are the souls that, when on earth, are " en- 
gaged in the pursuit of intellectual improvement, or in the 
study and diffusion of science." Now, in how striking a 
light does not this place the entire question! True, it 
militates with much directness against the great bulk of 
our Scottish patrons, — men whose souls, on Mr. Forsyth's 
showing, could be of no manner of use in the other world, 
unless, indeed, the other world had its mail-coaches to 
drive, and its dog-kennels to superintend, and its tourna- 
ments to ride tilts at ; and whose minds, as they have been 
doing nothing whatever to improve and strengthen them, 
must of necessity be thin, weak, rickety minds, disposed 
to evaporate in the moment of expiration. But, then, does 
it not make more than amends by at once clearing up the 
line between the rights of licentiates and the claims of the 
people ? We can scarce imagine anything more prepos- 
terous than that plebeian clowns — poor illiterate plough- 
men and mechanics — men whose spirits must wriggle in 
uneasy consciousness for some ten or twelve minutes after 
death only to give up existence forever — should be once 
permitted to stake their supposed spiritual interests against 
the well-based temporal welfare of some meritorious man 
of learning, who has studied his soul into immortality, and 
who, in following up his high destiny, may one day play 
somersaults in the sun's fiery atmosphere, or disport, de- 
lighted, amid glowing pumice and molten lava, in some 
sublime volcano of the moon. There is a flood of light 
cast here on the cases of Dunkeld and Auchterarder, and 
on the intrusions of Culsalmond and Marnoch. 

We had marked several other passages for quotation in 
the pamphlet of Mr. Forsyth ; and, from the respect which 



464 



MR. FORSYTH'S " REMARKS.' 



we must at all times entertain for the " ideas of a well- 
informed, experienced, and religiously-disposed man," may 
possibly again return to them. By the way, is it not a 
gratifying circumstance to find that the Scotsman is begin- 
ning to think all the better of people for their religion ? — 
nay, that he now actually knows what religion is? There 
is still hope of our contemporary. He had a lugubrious 
article, some few weeks ago, on the damage which he has 
sustained in his circulation from the misrepresentations of 
ministers and the insinuations of ministers' wives. They 
have censured him as Socinian, — they have denounced 
him as infidel. But their hostility will now surely cease. 
They may be assured that he has learned to set a high 
value on " religiously-disposed men," and to know them 
wherever he finds them. With regard to the philosophic 
Mr. Forsyth, our reflections are more melancholy. He 
was at one time a licentiate of the Church of Scotland, 
and yet the Church lost him. There are respectable 
citizens of Edinburgh who have heard him preach in the 
West Kirk; and it is a fact, known to at least a few, that 
he was a candidate, on one occasion, for the parish of 
Liberton. But the mortal rabble, who have not learned to 
think, — the dying illiterate, born to plough and make 
shoes, — were unable to value him as they ought; and so, 
setting himself to the study of the law, and to the dis- 
covery of the true principles of moral science, the Church 
lost him. And, save for this untoward circumstance, this 
fine old Moderate of the classical model of Robertson and 
Blair would be now a leader in the General Assembly, on 
the side that lacks talent most. How tantalizing the 
reflection ! We must add further that the perusal of his 
writings of remoter and more recent date has awakened in 
our mind a rather melancholy thought, which we scarce 
know how to express. " Let it never be forgotten," he 
says, in promulgating his discovery regarding the immor- 
tality of the great bulk of human souls, — "let it never be 
forgotten, that whatever has no tendency to improvement 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



465 



will gradually pass away, and disappear forever." Now, 
it is a solemn but not the less indisputable fact, that there 
has been no improvement in the writing or thinking of 
Robert Forsyth, Esq., advocate, for the last thirty-seven 
years. Nay, the reverse is very palpably the case. He 
writes worse, he thinks less vigorously, he has less of 
taste, his style is rougher, and his grammar less unex- 
ceptionable, than when he fixed the principles of moral 
science in the good year 1805. Alas for the inference ! 
but we at least have determined not to draw it. 



STATE CARPENTRY. 

It has been remarked, that in proportion as our English 
dramatists sank in the genius of their profession, they made 
amends in some sort by becoming adepts in all the merely 
mechanical parts of it. If they could no longer attain to 
the sublime in their poetry, they at last succeeded in 
making unexceptionable thunder. If their dialogues were 
no longer easy and natural, no one could say the same of 
their side-scenes of painted canvas or their snow-showers 
of white paper. If wit no longer flashed athwart the 
scenes, never in any former time were their flashes of 
ground rosin equally vivid. If their descriptions were 
tame, so were not their draperies and drop-curtains. Their 
plots might be unskilfully managed, but their trap-doors 
were wrought to admiration. They were masters of cos- 
tume, if not of character; and ghosts, lions, and tempests, 
Galium Tates and Elkannah Settles, amply occupied the 
place of truth, power, and nature, William Shakspeare 
and Philip Massinger. The poets disappeared, but their 
successors, the playwrights, were ingenious after their 
kind. 

We live in an age in which, apparently for some pur- 
pose of judgment, the more prominent actors on the politi- 



466 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



cal stage are but a kind of mechanists and playwrights, — 
men that bear the same sort of relation to true statesmen 
that the Shadwells and Settles of the English drama bore 
to its Jonsons and Fletchers of an earlier period. There 
is this difference, however, that whereas the playwrights 
were skilful after their kind, our mechanical statesmen are 
not. They are by no means mechanical statesmen of a 
high degree of skill. Their trap-doors creak in the open- 
ing; their ghosts awkwardly drop the winding-sheet in 
the rising ; their lions betray the pasteboard ; when they 
thunder, we detect the roll of the rusted shot in the iron 
kettle ; and when they lighten, the rosin puffs unkindled 
in a cloud of white dust athwart the stage. They are state- 
wrights of an inferior grade. 

Never was there an age or country in which problems 
of more signal difficulty or of more awful importance rose 
to demand the practical solution of the true statesman 
than rise in Britain at the present day. The masses are 
sinking everywhere into perilous ignorance, — degenerating 
into a vast brute power, terrible of fang and claw, and 
more terrible still in the brute heart that is growing up 
within it, growling in its den in uneasy hunger, and threat- 
ening to burst out, that it may lap the blood and tear the 
entrails of these poor state carpenters. And lo ! they are 
setting themselves to see whether they cannot smooth 
down the shag of its degenerate nature, and humanize its 
heart again by a scheme of Puseyite education. They are 
trying whether it may not be tamed into quiet and good 
order just by parading a few ghosts in front of it, — old, 
dry, bloodless ghosts of the apostolic succession, baptismal 
regeneration, and the real presence, — and by getting up 
behind these a picturesque screen of pillared aisles and 
transepts, crosses and choirs, organs and stained glass. 
They have fallen, in their wisdom, on a scheme resembling 
that of the ingenious breeder of live stock, who fixed bits 
of looking-glass in the walls of his pig-styes, immediately 
behind the feeding-troughs, that the animals within might 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



467 



occupy their whole minds in admiring the impalpable 
images, and feed, in consequence, with the quiet and profit 
which a state of pleasurable excitement induces. Between 
the two schemes, however, there obtains this mighty dif- 
ference, that whereas the swine-feeder associated his bodi- 
less images with his well-filled feeding-troughs, our less 
intelligent governors trust to the bodiless images alone, 
without taking into account in what manner the poor brute 
power is to be fed, or caring a farthing whether it is to 
feed or no. And so they strain hard in their Factory Bill 
to raise their obsolete images, — their old scarecrow ghosts, 
— things in which they themselves, with reference to them- 
selves, have no faith whatever. But they lack the true art 
of the playwright ; and, lo ! amid the clapping of trap- 
doors and the creaking of hinges, the wretched design, as 
defective in its management as deplorable in its concep- 
tion, stands palpable to all. And then, how exquisitely 
mean their style of dealing with the growing pauperism 
of the country, that frightful gangrene which is so fast eat- 
ing into its very vitals ! How utterly unable have they 
shown themselves to seize on one principle of power, — 
one moral element, — through which the plague might be 
staid ! By dint of great mental exertion they have con- 
trived to learn that sixpence of assessed money, after due 
deductions for the expense of collection and superin- 
tendence, is well-nigh adequate to the purchase of a three- 
penny loaf, and that rather fewer threepenny loaves are 
demanded by the hungry pauperism of the country when 
they are eaten in workhouses or on the treadmill than 
when eaten in any other way. And this is just all they 
know. Those great moral means of adding to the general 
health of the body politic, through which it might be made 
to absorb its pauperism, just as a sound natural body- 
absorbs the extravasated blood and inert matter of a severe 
contusion, filling with life and feeling what had become 
dead and insensate, they altogether lack the ability of 
comprehending. There is no guiding moral sense within 



468 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



them sufficiently enlightened by revelation to lead their 
intellects into the right track ; and so they wander blind 
in a perplexing labyrinth of mean and inadequate expe- 
dients. 

Never, perhaps, was there a time in which the exigencies 
of the kingdom so enormously overtopped the capabilities 
of its rulers. Our own poor Scotland, in her periods of 
greatest difficulty hitherto, had always her great men, — 
rulers fitted to the time, and adequate to the work of her 
deliverance. She lay in a rude state when Edward I. 
attempted her subjugation ; and it might have seemed a 
very small matter whether her fierce and barbarous peo- 
ple, our early ancestors, should have lived as the slaves of 
England, or have continued to enjoy the wild liberty of 
their half savage condition. But there were great though 
remote consequences involved in the preservation of her 
independence. She had purposes to serve in the economy 
of Providence which could not be effected by an enslaved 
province ; and so, in her time of extremest peril, God called 
upon two great men to fight her battles, — men of that 
very type and mould of greatness that was best fitted for 
her deliverance in such an age, — iron-headed, iron-handed 
champions, whose very nature it was that they could 
neither yield nor despair. They had a long and a sore 
battle to maintain in her behalf; and one of the two, ere 
its close, fell under the axe of the headsman. But they 
were thoroughly fitted for the appointed work, and so the 
appointed work was thoroughly done. A great moral 
revolution drew on. The Man of Sin, red with murder 
and reeking with impurity, was to be struck down in Scot- 
land. The people that had been preserved from the domi- 
nation of a foreign state had now to be delivered from the 
thrall of a degrading superstition. The exigencies of the 
contest demanded quite a different kind of greatness from 
that of Wallace and the Bruce; and so John Knox was 
called forth to fight out the quarrel in behalf of the truth ; 
and he did fight and gain it. The contest altered in its 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



469 



character ; it had to be maintained for the rights of con- 
science, not with an ecclesiastical power, but with the civil 
magistrates. The dauntless reformer who had fought in 
the front of the first battle had passed to his reward, and 
he seemed to have left no man behind him fitted to take 
his place ; but there was one Andrew Melville, a poor, 
sickly, orphan boy, attending one of our public schools at 
the time ; and when a leader was most needed, — needed 
so much that the cause of civil and religious liberty seemed 
lost for want of one, — Andrew Melville was summoned to 
take the lead. And so the battle was carried on. At the 
second Reformation, the same want w~as felt as at the first ; 
but it was necessary that the cause should prevail, and so 
the quiet manse of Leuchars furnished in Henderson a 
leader adequately fitted to grapple with every difficulty of 
the time, and whose extraordinary commission was at 
once recognized by his country. How wofully different 
the state of matters with regard to our governing powers 
of the present day ! One is continually reminded of the 
complaint of the kelpie in the old legend, — "The hour is 
come, but not the man." Great exigencies have found lit- 
tle men to grapple with them, and in a style, of course, that 
exhibits the character of the men, not of the exigencies. 
The stratagems by which chambermaids out-manceuvre 
one another in the graces of their mistresses have been 
substituted for the large principles by which the guidance 
of great affairs should be invariably regulated ; and ques- 
tions that affect the deepest feelings, and involve the 
vastest consequences, — questions that can have rest on 
only the basis of eternal truth and justice, — have been 
attempted to be settled through the exercise of exactly the 
same kind of arts that are employed by jockeys when they 
sell horses at fairs. We are reminded of the text in which 
God represents himself as taking away, for the sins of a 
people, the prudent and the counsellor, the captain and the 
honorable, the judge and the prophet; and appointing 

40 



470 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



" children to be their princes, and babes to have rule over 
them." 

The Church question has been again brought before the 
House of Lords, and with just the usual result. Truly, 
the part taken by her Majesty's Government in these 
barren discussions would be eminently ludicrous were it 
not so pitiable. Has the reader ever seen a nervous 
gentleman running on tiptoe with his coat-tails tucked up 
under his arm, magnanimously resolved on clearing at a 
leap some formidable five-feet ditch, but stopping abruptly 
short at the edge, at once panic-struck and angry, and 
merely gazing across for lack of courage to do more ? Has 
he seen him repeat and re-repeat the vast effort, and bring 
it in every instance to the same grave conclusion ? If so, 
he will find it no easy matter to fall on a fitter emblem of 
my Lord Aberdeen and his coadjutors than the nervous 
gentleman. Ever and anon his lordship tucks up his coat- 
tails, and, taking a vast run, to clear at a bound the Church 
question, gets panic-struck just as he reaches its nearer 
edge, and, standing stock still, grins angrily across. His 
lordship, and his lordship's coadjutors, have not yet felt 
what it is they have to deal "with. The steam of their 
ministerial Sunday dinners so obscures their dining-room 
panes, that they fail to see through them the religious 
beliefs of the country. They mark on the dimmed glass 
what they deem impalpable shadows stalking past, and as 
impalpable shadows they persist in treating them. Fools 
and slow of heart, who have failed utterly to know the 
day of their visitation ! Do they not even yet see that it 
is not with a handful of clergymen, but with the deeply- 
based religion of Scotland, that they have to do? — that 
they have come in rude collision, in their blindness, with a 
principle which, in its long struggles, has been often over- 
borne and grievously oppressed, but never eventually over- 
come, and whose battles, once begun, never terminate till 
opposition dies ? 

The Church, however, should feel grateful to the Earl 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



4T1 



of Aberdeen for the declarations of his short speech. They 
are not in the least equivocal. We find his lordship com- 
plaining-, in his introductory sentence, of a certain existing 
desire "to extort from her Majesty's government, at the 
last moment before the meeting of the General Assembly, 
some declaration different from that which had been 
already deliberately given/' And'this desire, as her Maj- 
esty's government had thoroughly made up their minds 
on the matter, his lordship deemed, of course, a very 
annoying sort of thing. We find him politely adding, 
however, that "he had no objections again to state the 
nature of the measure which, at a fitting time, her Majesty's 
ministers were ready to bring forward." 

Again to state!" These are plain English words, 
and they mean that what his lordship on this occasion had 
no objection to state was, not a new revelation of the 
mind of government, but a revelation which had been 
made on some occasion before. They unequivocally pre- 
mise that his lordship's statement was but the repetition 
of a former statement ; and obvious it is that that former 
statement cannot be held to mean some vague, little marked 
statement of some uninfluential member of the Cabinet, 
but just none other than the statement "deliberately 
given,'' with express reference to which his lordship had 
resolved not to be entrapped into any antagonist declara- 
tion. Xow, where shall we find this deliberate statement? 
There was no allusion made in her Majesty's speech to our 
Scottish Church question. Her Majesty's speech was a 
great document, filled with quite higher matters, — matters 
such as her Majesty's gratitude for the Scottish lath-arches 
and Scottish huzzas, which arose in honor of her Majesty's 
last year's visit. Virtually, however, the Church question 
had a queen's speech of its own ; and this sort of queen's 
speech — a public document embodying the deliberate 
declaration of her Majesty's government — their stereo- 
typed scriptural canon, from which they were too good 
Christians to be driven, — bears the name of "Sir James 



472 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



Graham! 8 Letter? There exists no other "deliberately 
given declaration" on the part of government, to which a 
crown minister could refer ; and our readers would do well 
to ponder the Earl of Aberdeen's frankly avowed resolu- 
tion regarding it. 

His lordship's restatement of its conditions is in a some- 
what short-hand style, though not quite unmarked by the 
adroitness of the diplomatist. He condenses the rather 
tedious sophistry of the red-hair argument into a not 
unplausible-looking sentence, which intimates liberty of 
objection on the part of the people, and freedom of judg- 
ment in deciding on the grounds, on the part of the 
Church ; with the proviso, however, that these grounds 
should be in every case faithfully recorded. The people 
may object, if they please, to the red hair of the presen- 
tee ; and then the Church, should it also conscientiously 
dislike red hair, and so deem the objection a solid one, has 
straightway but to enter on its books, — " Unsuitable pi*e- 
sentee, — red-haired ; people and we dorft like red hair /" 
and then — why, then, the red-haired presentee must just 
be content to despair of his settlement, unless, indeed, 
there be some hope for him in those details and modi- 
fications of the measure which the Earl of Aberdeen 
"abstained purposely from entering into," lest "certain 
persons" should misinterpret and misrepresent them. The 
comment of Lord Brougham on this important portion of 
the noble earl's speech was sufficiently emphatic. "If his 
noble friend's announcement was understood in one sense," 
he said, "it would be an utter abandonment of the claims 
of the civil courts, and would be calculated to excite much 
alarm ; " but " taken in another view, it was quite consist- 
ent with sound doctrine and civil rights, and did not touch 
patronage." He might well have added that the Church 
was quite at liberty to repose as confidently as she could 
on the one meaning; and lawyers, such as his lordship, to 
seize fast hold of the other. 

The Earl of Aberdeen stated further, in just accordance 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



473 



with his introductory sentences, that " the broad and gen- 
eral principles on which the government were ready to 
act" were in " conformity with the declarations that had 
been often made by him;" and "that it remained to be 
seen whether the General Assembly, after what he had 
said, would think it necessary to secede, or to wait for the 
purpose of ascertaining what her Majesty's government 
intended to jDropose to the legislature." There must surely 
be some confusion of idea here. Had the noble earl set 
out by stating that her Majesty's government were at 
length determined to give some declaration " different from 
that which they had already deliberately given," — had he, 
instead of using the significant " again to state" used the 
equally significant " state for the first time" — had he said 
that their broad and general principles of settlement were 
principles not in conformity with their previously emitted 
declarations, but, on the contrary, principles which they 
had but recently taken up, — principles newly adopted by 
them, not the old ones, — then, on at least his lordship's 
showing, there might be some plausible reason for delaying 
the secession, just "for the purpose of ascertaining what 
government intended proposing to the legislature." But 
seeing that the principles of this prospective measure are 
confessedly the old principles, where, we marvel, lies the 
reason for delay? With measures on the old principles 
the Church is sufficiently acquainted already ; she has seen 
and does not like them; they are disagreeable sights at 
best; and she would be but little in earnest should she 
lengthen out delay until the "fitting" but undeterminate 
time when her Majesty's government may think proper to 
add one more to their number. The Earl of Aberdeen's 
concluding remark might surely have been spared, and yet 
it is possible enough to find an apology for it too. "If 
they'''' [the Evangelical party] "did think it necessary to 
secede at once," said his lordship, "he imagined that they 
would be scarcely able at the last day to call on the God 
of truth to witness that they had been driven to this. course 

40* 



474 



STATE CARPENTRY. 



by the persecution of the legislature." " When you con- 
sider," says Carlyle, in an ealogium on Cromwell, — " when 
you consider that Oliver believed in a God, the difference 
between Oliver's position and that of the subsequent gov- 
ernors of this country becomes, the more you reflect on it, 
the more immeasurable." His lordship's allusion to Deity 
here, charitably regarded, and taken in connection with 
the fact that his lordship is one of those governors, may 
tell, after all, to his lordship's advantage. 

In shipwreck much depends on knowing the exact mo- 
ment in which the wreck, fast beating to pieces on a lee 
shore, may be quitted with greatest chance of escape ; and 
it requires both resolution and presence of mind to enable 
the seaman promptly to avail himself of it. Much de- 
pends, in battle, on knowing the exact moment in which 
the charge may be made with most effect. It would be 
well that on Thursday the Church should not linger, no 
not for a moment, beyond the propitious hour, within the 
wreck of the Erastian Establishment. It might be fatal 
to convert her broad, unanimous question of principle into 
a contracted, disputed question of time, — a question re- 
specting 'an hour or a day, — a question whether the sepa- 
ration should take place at one instant or at another, — 
whether it should be an incident of the eighteenth, or of 
the nineteenth, or of the twentieth. It would be quite 
worthy of our state carpenters to exert themselves heart 
and soul in striving to transpose the whole matter into a 
question of hours and minutes, — to hold out some vague 
promise, to tuck up their coat-tails at the last moment, and 
cry out: "O, wait for one short half-week, till we have 
gathered way, and we shall then overleap the separating 
ditch, and be altogether with you." But it would be 
quite unworthy of the Church to suffer the state-wrights 
so to entrap her. 



THE DISRUPTION. 



475 



THE DISRUPTION. 

The fatal die has been cast. On Thursday last the 
religion of Scotland was disestablished, and a principle 
recognized in its stead which has often served to check 
and modify the religious influences, but which in no age 
or country ever yet existed as a religion. Not but that 
it has performed an important part, even in Scotland. It 
has served hitherto to control the Christianity of the 
Establishment — to dilute it to such a degree, if we may 
so speak, as to render it bearable to statesmen without 
God. And now its appointed work seems over. It con- 
stituted at best but the drag-chain and the hook — things 
that have no vocation apart from the chariot. But the 
time has at length arrived in which the state will bear 
with but the hook and the drag, apart from that which 
they checked — with but the diluting pabulum, apart from 
that which it diluted ; and so a mere negation of Chris- 
tianity — an antagonist force to the religious power — has 
been virtually recognized as exclusively the principle 
which is to be entrenched in the parish churches of Scot- 
land. The day that witnessed a transaction so momentous 
can be a day of no slight mark in modern history. It 
stands between two distinct states of things — a signal to 
Christendom. It holds out its sign to these latter times, 
that God and the world have drawn off their forces to 
opposite sides, and that His sore and great battle is soon 
to begin. 

The future can alone adequately develop the more 
important consequences of the event. At present we shall 
merely attempt presenting the reader with a few brief notes 
of the aspect which it exhibited. The early part of Thurs- 
day had its periods of fitful cloud and sunshine, and the 
tall, picturesque tenements of the Old Town now lay dim 
and indistinct in shadow, now stood prominently out in 



476 



THE DISRUPTION. 



the light. There was an unusual throng and bustle in the 
streets at a comparatively early hour, which increased 
greatly as the morning wore on towards noon. We marked, 
in especial, several knots of Moderate clergy hurrying 
along to the levee, laughing and chatting with a vivacity 
that reminded one rather of the French than of the Scotch 
character, and evidently in that state of nervous excite- 
ment which, in a certain order of minds, the near approach 
of some very great event, indeterminate and unappreciable 
in its bearings, is sure always to occasion. 

As the morning wore on, the crowds thickened in the 
streets, and the military took their places. The principles 
involved in the anticipated disruption gave to many a 
spectator a new association with the long double line of 
dragoons that stretched adown the High Street, far as the 
eye could reach, from the venerable Church of St. Giles, 
famous in Scottish story, to the humbler Tron. The light 
flashed fitfully on their long swords and helmets, and the 
light scarlet of .their uniforms contrasted strongly with the 
dingier vestments of the masses, in which they seemed as 
if more than half ingulfed. When the sun glanced out, 
the eye caught something peculiarly picturesque in the 
aspect of the Calton Hill, with its imposing masses of 
precipices overtopped by towers and monuments, and its 
intermingling bushes and trees now green with the soft, 
delicate foliage of May. Between its upper and under 
line of rock a dense living belt of human beings girdled 
it round, sweeping gradually downwards from shoulder to 
base, like the sash of his order on the breast of a nobleman. 
The Commissioner's procession passed, with sound of 
trumpet and drum, and marked by rather more than the 
usual splendor. There was much bravery and glitter, — 
satin and embroidery, varnish and gold lace, — no lack, in 
short, of that cheap and vulgar magnificence which can be 
got up to order by the tailor and the upholsterer for carni- 
vals and Lord Mayors' days. But it was felt by the assem- 
bled thousands, as the pageant swept past, that the real 



THE DISRUPTION. 



477 



spectacle of the day was a spectacle of a different char- 
acter. 

The morning levee had been marked by an incident of 
a somewhat extraordinary nature, and which history, 
though in these days little disposed to mark prodigies and 
omens, will scarce fail to record. The crowd in the Cham- 
ber of Presence was very great, and there was, we believe, 
a considerable degree of confusion and pressure in conse- 
quence. Suddenly — whether brushed by some passer by, 
jostled rudely aside, or merely affected by the tremor of 
the floor communicated to the partitioning — a large por- 
trait of William the Third, that had held its place in Holy- 
rood for nearly a century and a half, dropped heavily from 
the walls. " There," exclaimed a voice from the crowd, 
" there goes the revolution settlement." 

For hours before the meeting of Assembly the galleries 
of St. Andrew's church, with the space behind, railed off 
for the accommodation of office-bearers not members, were 
crowded to suffocation, and a vast assemblage still contin- 
ued to besiege the doors. The galleries from below had 
the " overbellying " appearance in front described by Blair, 
and seemed as if piled up to the roof behind. Immedi- 
ately after noon the Moderate members began to drop in 
one by one, and to take their places on the moderator's right, 
while the opposite benches remained well-nigh empty. 
What seemed most fitted to catch the eye of a stranger 
was the rosy appearance of the men, and their rounded 
contour of face and feature. Moderatism, in the present 
day, is evidently not injuring its complexion by the corn- 
position of " Histories of Scotland " like that of Robertson, 
or by prosecuting such "Inquiries into the Human Mind" 
as those instituted by Reid. We were reminded, in glanc. 
over the benches, of a bed of full-blown piony-roses glis^ 
tening after a shower ; and, could one have but substituted 
among them the monk's frock for the modern dress-coat, 
and given to each crown the shaven tonsure, not only 
would they have passed admirably for a conclave of monks 



478 



THE DISRUPTION. 



met to determine some weighty point of abbey-income or 
right of forestry, but for a conclave of one determinate 
age, — that easily circumstanced middle age in which, the 
days of vigil and maceration being over, and the disturb- 
ing doctrines of' the Reformation not yet aroused from out 
of their long sleep, the Churchman had little else to do 
than just amuse himself with concerns of the chase and 
the cellar, the larder and the dormitory. The benches on 
the left began slowly to fill, and on the entrance of every 
more distinguished member a burst of recognition and 
welcome shook the gallery. Their antagonists had been 
all permitted to take their places in ominous silence. The 
music of the pageant was heard outside; the moderator 1 
entered, attired in his gown ; and ere the appearance 
of the Lord High Commissioner, preceded by his pages 
and rnace-bearer, and attended by the Lord Provost, the 
Lord Advocate, and the Solicitor-General, the Evangelical 
benches had filled as densely as those of their opponents ; 
and the cross benches, appropriated, in perilous times like 
the present, to a middle party careful always to pitch their 
principles below the suffering point, were also fully occu- 
pied. Never before was there seen so crowded a General 
Assembly. The number of members had been increased 
beyond all precedent by the double returns ; and almost 
every member was in his place. The moderator opened the 
proceedings by a deeply impressive prayer; but though the 
silence within was complete, a Babel of tumultuary sounds 
outside, and at the closed doors, expressive of the intense 
anxiety of the excluded multitude, had the effect of ren- 
dering him scarcely audible in the more distant parts of the 
building. There stood beside the chair, though on opposite 
sides, the meet representatives of the belligerent parties. 
On the right we marked Principal M'Farlan, of Glasgow, 
— the man, in these altered times, when missions are not 
held disreputable, and even Moderates profess to believe 

l The late Rev. Dr. Welsh, Professor of Church History in the University of 
Edinburgh. 



THE DISRUPTION. 



479 



that the gospel may be communicated to savages without 
signally injuring their morals, who could recommend his 
students to organize themselves into political clubs, but 
dissuade them from forming missionary societies. On the 
left stood Thomas Chalmers, the man through whose in- 
domitable energy and Christian zeal two hundred churches 
were added to the Establishment in little more than ten 
years. Science, like religion, had its representatives on 
the moderator's right and left. On the one side we saw 
Moderate science personified in Dr. Anderson, of New- 
burgh, — a dabbler in geology, who found a fish in the Old 
Red Sandstone, and described it as a beetle. We saw 1 
science not Moderate, on the other side, represented by Sir 
David Brewster. 

The moderator rose and addressed the House in a few 
impressive sentences. There had been an infringement, he 
said, on the constitution of the Church, — an infringement 
so great that they could not constitute its General Assem- 
bly without a violation of the union between Church and 
State, as now authoritatively defined and declared. He 
was therefore compelled, he added, to protest against pro- 
ceeding further; and, unfolding a document which he held 
in his hand, he read, in a slow and emphatic manner, the 
protest of the Church. For the first few seconds, the 
extreme anxiety to hear defeated its object; the universal 
hush, hush, occasioned considerably more noise than it 
allayed. But the momentary confusion was succeeded by 
the most unbroken silence ; and the reader went on till 
the impressive close of the document, when he flung it 
down on the table of the house, and solemnly departed. 
He was followed, at a pace's distance, by Dr. Chalmers ; 
Dr. Gordon and Dr. Patrick M'Farlan immediately suc- 
ceeded ; and then the numerous sitters on the thickly occu- 
pied benches behind filed after them, in a long, unbroken 
line, which for several minutes together continued to 
thread the passage to the eastern door, till at length only 
a blank space remained. As the well-known faces and 



480 



THE DISRUPTION. 



forms of some of the ablest and most eminent men that 
ever adorned the Church of Scotland glided along in the 
current, to disappear from the courts of the state institu- 
tion forever, there rose a cheer from the galleries, and an 
impatient cry of "Out, out," from the ministers and elders 
not members of Assembly, now engaged in sallying forth, 
to join with them, from the railed area behind. The cheers 
subsided, choked in not a few instances in tears. The 
occasion was by far too solemn for the commoner manifes- 
tations of either censure or approval : it excited feelings 
that lay too deep for expression. There was a marked 
peculiarity in the appearance of their opponents, — a blank, 
restless, pivot-like turning of head from the fast emptying 
benches to one another's faces ; but they uttered no word, 
not even in whispers. At length, when the last of the 
withdrawing party had disappeared, there ran from bench 
to bench a hurried, broken whispering: "How many?" 
"How many?" — "A hundred and fifty?" — "No." — "Yes." 
" Four hundred ? " — " No ; " and then for a moment all 
was still again. The scene that followed we deemed one 
of the most striking of the day. The empty, vacated 
benches stretched away from the moderator's seat in the 
centre of the building to the distant wall. There suddenly 
glided into the front rows a small party of men whom no 
one knew, — obscure, mediocre, blighted-looking men, that, 
contrasted with the well-known forms of our Chalmerses 
and Gordons, Candlishes and Cunninghams, M'Farlans, 
Brewsters, and Dunlops, reminded one of the thin and 
blasted corn-ears of Pharaoh's vision, and, like them, too, 
seemed typical of a time of famine and destitution. Who 
are these? was the general query; but no one seemed to 
know. At length the significant whisper ran along the 
house, "The Forty." There was a grin of mingled con- 
tempt and compassion visible on many a broad Moderate 
face, and a too audible titter shook the gallery. There 
seemed a degree of incongruity in the sight, that partook 
highly of the ludicrous. For our own part, we were so 



THE DISKUPTIOX. 



481 



carried away by a vagrant association, and so missed Ali 
Baba, the oil-kettle, and the forty jars, as to forget for a 
time that at the doors of these unfortunate men lies the 
rain of the Scottish Establishment, The aspect of the 
Assembly sank, when it had in some degree recovered 
itself, into that expression of tame and flat commonplace 
which it must be henceforth content to bear, until roused, 
happily, into short-lived activity by the sharp paroxysms 
of approaching destruction. 

A spectacle equally impressive with that exhibited by 
the ministers and elders of the Free Church, as they 
winded in long procession to their place of meeting, there 
to constitute their independent Assembly, Edinburgh has 
certainly not witnessed since those times of the Cove- 
nant when Johnston of Warriston unrolled the solemn 
parchment in the churchyard of the Greyfriars. and the 
assembled thousands, from the peer to the peasant, adhib- 
ited their names. The procession, with Dr. Chalmers, and 
the moderator in his robes and cap of office, at its head, 
extended, three in depth, for a full quarter of a mile. The 
Lord Provost of the city rode on before. Rather more 
than four hundred were ministers of the Church ; all the 
others were elders. Be it remembered, that the number of 
ministers ejected from their charges at the Restoration, and 
who maintained the struggle in behalf of Presbytery dur- 
ing the long persecution of twenty-eight years, amounted 
in all to but three hundred and seventy-six : but then, as 
now, the religious principles which they maintained were 
those of the country. They were jjrinciples that had laid 
fast hold of the national mind, and the fires of persecution 
served only to render their impress ineradicable. We trust 
in a very few weeks to see the four hundred increased to 
five. Is it not strange how utterly the great lessons of his- 
tory have failed to impress the mean and wretched rulers 
of our country in this the day of their visitation ? Bishop 
Fairfoul, when urging on the act that desolated the par- 
ishes of Scotland, assured Commissioner Middleton that 

41 



482 



THE CLOSE. 



there would not be ten in his diocese who would not pre- 
fer sacrificing their principles to losing their stipends ; and 
Commissioner Middleton believed him. The time of ejec- 
tion came. On the last Sabbath of October, 1662, the 
Presbyterian ministers preached and bade farewell to their 
congregations; and on that day, as we find it stated by 
Burnet, two hundred churches were at once shut up, and 
abandoned equally by pastors and by people. "And never," 
says Kirkton, " was there such a sad Sabbath in Scotland." 
Great was the astonishment, and even consternation, of the 
government. " They had committed," says Hetherington, 
"the grievous error into which unprincipled men are so 
apt to fall, of concluding what the Presbyterian ministers 
would do by what they themselves would have done in 
similar circumstances, and saw their error when it was too 
late to repair it." The struggle went on for more than half 
an age, and terminated only when a dynasty had changed, 
and a discrowned king wandered in unhappiness, and 
begged, an exile in a foreign land. 



THE CLOSE. 

The Free and Residuary Assemblies have closed their 
sittings; the over-strung mind of the Scottish public 
demands its interval of rest, and thrilling excitement and 
incessant labor give place, for a brief period, to compara- 
tive quiescence and repose. For our own part, for at least 
a few months to come, we shall see the sun rise less fre- 
quently than we have done of late, and miss oftener the 
earliest chirp of the birds that welcome the first gray of 
morning from among the old trees of Heriot's and the 
Meadows. The chapter added to the History of the 
Church of Scotland has just been completed. The con- 
cluding page presents the usual blank interval; and we feel 
inclined to lay down the volume for a space, and ponder 
over its contents. 



* 



THE CLOSE. 



483 



Almost all our readers must be acquainted with Hether- 
ington's admirable History of the Church of Scotland, — 
our only existing ecclesiastical history that brings down its 
eventful narrative to times so near the present as to record 
in its latter pages the events which but a year or two ago 
were exhibited as matters of news in the public prints. 
The unfinished appearance of the close of this volume must 
have been remarked by all its readers. It reminded us 
always of an interesting story, with a handful of the con- 
cluding leaves torn away. It was a drama mutilated in the 
terminal scenes of the fifth act. The current of the narra- 
tive flowed onwards, broadening and deepening in its inter- 
est to one definite point of time, and then, like the current 
which Mirza saw in his vision, disappeared abruptly in the 
thick mists of futurity, just when the signs of some great 
change had increased most in number, and become most 
palpable in their indications. The historian may now com-, 
plete his work by uniting to his concluding chain of occur- 
rences the catastrophe in which they have terminated. 
The old state of things is over, and a new state has begun. 

There are points of prominent interest involved in the 
event, which must be apparent to all. It is now exactly 
two hundred and eighty-three years since the General 
Assembly of the Church of Scotland held its first meeting, 
and laid down in its First Book of Discipline, and its first 
Confession of Faith, the truths in which it believed, and 
the principles by which its government was to be regu- 
lated. These embodied in all their breadth the Redeem- 
er's rights of prerogative as sole Head and King of his 
Church, and, with these, all those duties and privileges of 
the Church's members which his rights necessarily involve 
and originate. They brought out everywhere the grand 
master-idea, that wherever God, as King, promulgates a* 
law, there must there spring up on the part of man, as his 
subject, not merely a corresponding duty, but also a right ; 
a duty in relation to his adorable King, a right in rela- 
tion to his fellows ; the duty of obedience with respect 



484 



THE CLOSE. 



to the one, the right of being at perfect freedom to obey 
with regard to the others. The fogs of a dreary supersti- 
tion had enveloped for ages the throne of Deity; God had 
been long an unknown and unrecognized Sovereign ; and 
it was necessary, therefore, that his rights should be 
broadly asserted. An iron despotism had pressed upon 
the people. It was imperative, therefore, that their corre- 
sponding rights — their rights, which originate in his 
rights — should be broadly asserted also ; and on this 
master-idea — the fundamental idea of all revelation — 
the Church of Scotland, in accordance with the Divine 
pattern, built up her Confession of Faith and her Book of 
Discipline. The points most prominently developed in 
her first General Assembly must be familiar, through these 
well-known works, to all our readers. Her doctrine of the 
Divine Headship, her doctrine of spiritual independence, 
. her scheme of ecclesiastical discipline, and her broad 
anti-patronage principle, rose up in high relief. The 
relation, too, in which she stood to all the other Reformed 
Churches of the world was one of peculiar mark. Her 
great leader had been, only a few years before, one of the 
chaplains of the King of England. He had been the chosen 
minister, at an early period, first of a congregation at 
Frankfort, then of a congregation at Geneva. He had held 
communion with Evangelism wherever he had found it ; 
and the Church to which he belonged, and which he led, 
had, like himself, her bonds of Christian communion and 
fellowship extended all over Europe. Wherever there 
existed a Church of the Reformation, there the Church 
of Scotland recognized a sister and ally. 

Now, let the reader but compare her last General As- 
sembly, in which Evangelism maintained its place, ■ — the 
Assembly of 1842, — with her first General Assembly, — 
that of 1560; and we are sure he will scarce fail to be 
struck by the resemblance. There was not a single prin- 
ciple prominently maintained in the one that was not 
determinedly asserted in the other. It would seem as if, 



THE CLOSE. 



485 



in completing her cycle of nearly three centuries, she had 
taken a few steps in advance over the identical ground 
from which she had at first started. Her last Assembly was 
just her first Assembly come back again. The doctrine of 
the Divine Headship asserted its prominent place, as at 
first, in due connection with the old master-idea that the 
rights of the Divine King originate, of necessity, inalien- 
able rights of his subjects ; and hence her struggle with the 
invading civil power, to preserve intact her spiritual inde- 
pendence. She asserted her discipline ; and, in the due 
exercise of the keys, ejected and shut out of her com- 
munion the thief and the swindler, holding fast the door 
against the beleaguering force that would have so fain 
thrust them in again. She received friendly letters and 
deputations, as of old, from her sisters of the Reformation. 
She repealed the infamous act of 1799, that had placed her 
in a state of non-communion with the whole Christian 
world. And, passing upwards from the mere non-intrusion 
principle of her Second Book of Discipline to the free- 
election principle of her First Book, she solemnly avowed, 
with her great founders, that "it appertaineth to the 
people, and to every several congregation, to elect their 
minister." The last step completed the cycle, — it was all 
that was wanting tcf complete it ; and the Church of Scot- 
land stood once more on the identical ground from which 
three centuries ago her career of usefulness had begun. 
How exquisitely true to Goldsmith's fine simile ! The 
beleaguered hare, when -pursued by "hounds and horses," is 
described as "pantiug to the place from which at first she 
flew." Her course may have included many a distant 
track, and involved many a tortuous winding; but she 
dies in her form at last. Is it not a significant circum- 
stance, that the Church disestablished by a British Parlia- 
ment in 1843 should be in every respect, down to even the 
minutest point, the identical Church established by a Scot- 
tish Parliament in 1567? Restored in all her lineaments, 
she quits, just as she entered it, the asylum furnished her by 



486 



THE CLOSE. 



the state, for the state refuses to grant her harborage any 
longer on the old terms; and, shaking off the dust of her 
feet in testimony against it, she again sets out on her pil- 
grimage with the same hostile world around her, and the 
same unchanging God above, — that world in which her 
Master suffered, and which he will one day thoroughly 
overcome, — and that God for the integrity of whose laws 
she has contended, and who has promised that in her hour 
of persecution he will be with her in the fire. 

Curiously significant as this circumstance may seem, it 
has found in the Disruption a kind of counterpart, if we 
may so speak, which we deem at least equally curious and 
significant. Has the reader ever marked a watch-spring 
snapping in the centre, and the two fragments, which in 
their entire state formed but one circle, coiling into two 
independent circles, that presented to each other no point 
'of reunion ? The Disruption no sooner takes place than 
each, through a principle of elasticity in itself, instantane- 
ous in its operation, is bent away in a direction diametri- 
cally opposed to that of its neighbor. And such, on an 
immensely, extended scale, has been the effects of the 
Disruption in the Church. Its two parties, that for so 
many years formed, ostensibly at least, but one body, have 
no sooner drawn apart, than, moved each by its own 
internal principle, they have coiled up into antagonistic 
bodies. The residuary Assembly of 1843 has been even 
more remarkable than the General Assembly of 1842. It 
required a series of years to bring up Evangelism to the 
identical ground occupied by our first reformers ; whereas, 
to throw Moderatism back to the ground which it occupied 
in its palmiest days — to throw it back a whole half-cen- 
tury — was but the work of a moment. To use the figure 
of Cowper, " the bow, long forced into a curve," and then 
suddenly released, has " flown to its first position with a 
spring." Is it not strange how very obviously, in these 
latter days, almost every form and modification of religion 
among us is returning to its original type ? There is a 



THE CLOSE. 



48T 



resurrection everywhere of the identical bodies in which 
their deeds of good or of evil were wrought of old. Laudism 
stands erect in England, with all its rags of Rome about 
it, like a thief surrounded in court by the property which 
he has stolen. Rome herself has revived among us, and 
receives, in her true character, the patronage and support 
of the state. The Evangelism of our first reformers comes 
forward, disestablished and denounced, to begin among the 
people anew her peculiar work of reformation. And now, 
here is Moderatism shutting itself up from the communion 
of all Christendom, — recognizing the secular power as 
possessed of sole authority to bind and to loose, — throw- 
ing up at once the reins of discipline, — brim-full as ever 
of cruel pity for its erring ministers, — coarsely regardless 
as ever of those sacred rights of the people which originate 
in their duties, — true, in short, in every respect to its 
original type, — the identical Moderatism of the days of 
Robertson and of Hill. Graves are opening in these latter 
times, and churches are coming forth, restored to their 
original state and condition. What does so wonderful a 
resurrection portend? Is there no hour of judgment at 
hand, in which there is a throne to be set, and books to be 
opened ? 

How very brief a period has elapsed since the govern- 
ment of this country could have settled at small expense 
the Church question ! and how entirely has it passed be- 
yond the reach of human adjustment now! In disestab- 
lishing the religion of Scotland, there has been a breach 
made in the very foundations of national security, which 
can never be adequately filled up. The yawning chasm is 
crowded with phantoms of terror. There are the forms of 
an infidel Erastianism in front, and surplices, crosses, and 
treble crowns in the rear; while deep from the darkness 
comes a voice, as of many waters, the roar of infuriated 
multitudes broken loose from religion, and thirsting for 
blood. May God avert the omen ! That man must have 
studied to but little purpose the events of the last twelve 



488 



UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 



days who does not see that there is a Guiding Hand order- 
ing and regulating all. The pawns in this great game do 
not move of themselves ; the adorable Being who has 
" foreordained whatsoever cometh to pass " is working out 
his own designs in his own way. The usurpations of civil 
magistrates, the treachery of unfaithful ministers, the 
errors and mistakes of blind-hearted and incompetent 
statesmen, all tend to accomplish his decrees ; and it would 
be well, surely, since in one way or other all must forward 
his purposes, to be made to forward them rather as his 
fellow-workers than as his .blind, insensate tools. Let the 
disestablished Church take courage; there is a time of 
severe conflict before her ; but the result of the battle is 
certain. 



UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 

Some of our readers must have witnessed the singularly 
imposing scene at Canonmills, on the evening of Sabbath 
the 28th May, when Edinburgh so poured out its inhab- 
itants to attend the ministrations of the Free Church, that 
the vast hall, containing with ease an assemblage of three 
thousand persons, could receive scarce a tithe of the whole; 
and when, after the building had been filled with its one 
huge congregation to overflowing, and many thousands 
had returned disappointed to their homes, such vast multi- 
tudes still continued to linger outside, that they were 
formed into five congregations more. Perhaps on no for- 
mer occasion was Edinburgh the scene of a spectacle so 
extraordinary. The unbroken stream of human beings 
that continued to pour downwards from the city, long 
after a counter-current, like an eddy tide creeping along 
the shore, had begun to ascend, giving evidence that hun- 
dreds had been already disappointed; the vast masses 
that blackened the area around the building, and choked 
up every avenue of access ; the crowds that besieged the 



UNION AND -ITS PEINCIPLES. 



489 



doors; the mustering into distinct groups, as congrega- 
tion after congregation was formed in the open air, under 
a dark and lowering sky ; the voice of psalms arising 
from so many contiguous points, united and yet distinct, 
as if each of the six assemblages had been but an indi- 
vidual worshipper ; and then, when the clouds broke and 
the rain descended, the perseverance manifested by each 
of the groups in holding its place in undiminished bulk 
around the preacher, like our Scottish congregations of 
old, faithful in times of trial, till at length the showers 
ceased, and the quiet of a mild though sombrous twilight 
settled down over the whole, — the spectacle, in short, 
with all its various accompaniments, formed one of those 
pregnant scenes which grow upon the mind, affecting the 
imagination more powerfully when called up in memory at 
an after period than even when under the eye, and that, 
from this quality of increasing" instead of diminishing in 
bulk as months and years intervene, are once witnessed 
never to be forgotten. 

Imposing and unprecedented, however, as the spectacle 
must have seemed, the present age bids fair to witness 
many such. They seem destined to form one of the char- 
acteristic marks of these latter times, in which religious 
questions are so fast assuming their old place and impor- 
tance. The spectacle described took place, as we have 
said, on the 28th May. Only four days passed, and the 
capital of the sister kingdom became, in turn, the scene of 
a spectacle which, if less picturesque in its details, was 
almost identical in its character. Exeter Hall — a build- 
ing which accommodates with comparative comfort, in its 
one huge apartment, fully five thousand persons — was 
crowded by at least six thousand ; and out of the surplus 
multitudes that could not gain access, two other large 
meetings were formed. What object could have drawn 
together such immense crowds, — an object, says one of 
the speakers who addressed the larger meeting, in an 
explanatory letter to the editor of the Patriot, altogether 



490 



UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 



new to the religions public? They assembled to lay the 
foundations of an expansive scheme of Christian union 
among all the various Evangelistic Churches of the empire ; 
and there met on the same platform, for the purpose of 
cordial cooperation in this good cause, Baptists and 
Moravians, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, Wesleyans, 
Independents, and Lutherans. Every Evangelistic Church 
sent its representatives ; and the absence of all representa- 
tion on the part of the others served but to indicate their 
character. The Papist was not there, nor the Puseyite, 
nor the High Churchman, nor the Socinian, nor the Uni- 
tarian, nor the Residuary. The two extremes were want- 
ing, — Erastianism and semi-infidelity were absent on the 
one hand, and superstition and priestly domination on the 
other. 

It cannot, we think, be doubted that, in the religious 
world, the current has at length fairly set in in favor of 
union and cooperation. The Evangelistic Churches are at 
length yielding to the emergencies of time. During a long 
period of external quiet they existed as a congeries of 
independent states, rather more at peace, we are afraid, 
with the world without than with one another. Each had 
its own disputed rights and by-laws, — its own municipal 
and burghal privileges, — for which it stood up quite often 
enough against its fellows; and they forgot at times, in 
the heat of controversy, the great federal union by which 
they had been bound together. They differed as near 
neighbors sometimes differ when there is no common 
enemy to annoy them. But the exigencies of the time 
demand a wiser and more expansive course of policy. 
Persia is on the march, and so Athens and Lacedemon 
must resign their private quarrels, and arm, not in front of 
one another, but side by side. Hitherto the confederated 
states have held but their own local parliaments; we hail 
in the Exeter Hall meeting on Thursday the rudiments of 
a general congress. The armies of the rising apostasy 
are mustering on every side of us. A decrepit Erastian- 



UNION A2nD ITS PRINCIPLES. 



491 



ism holds the temporalities of the Scottish Establishment, 
not so much on its own behalf as on behalf of Puseyite 
Episcopacy, in the way that a guardian holds property for 
a minor; of the temporalities of the English Establish- 
ment. Rome, under a false name, has already entered on 
possession. The invading power has seized, either in its 
own proper character or by proxy, on the strongholds and 
fortalices of the country ; and it is high time, therefore, 
and more than time, that Protestantism should be calling 
her war councils, and laying clown her lines of defence. 

The bond of union in such councils — the constitution, 
if we may so speak, of such general congresses — does not 
threaten to involve, if a spirit of wisdom and charity be 
present, any very formidable difficulty. It was moved at 
the great Exeter meeting, by the Hon. and Rev. Baptist 
Xoel, that the meeting had assembled on the grounds fur- 
nished by truths common to all the Evangelistic Churches, 
especially on that first principle of the Reformation, "the 
sufficiency and authority of the holy Scriptures as the sole 
rule of Christian faith, and the right of private judgment." 
— that K it recognized as the bond of union the great doc- 
trines unanimously received by all Evangelical Christians, 
such as the doctrine of the holy Trinity, of the infinite 
love of the Father, of the perfect atonement of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, of the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, of 
justification by faith alone, and of the necessity of regen- 
eration to a Christian life and character ; " and, further, that 
the meeting held "the agreement in these fundamental 
truths among Evangelical Christians to be so unanimous in 
substance and spirit as to form a firm foundation for con- 
cord and union. '' To somewhat similar effect were the 
remarks of Dr. Candlish in our Free Assembly, on the 
bicentenary commemoration of the Assembly of Westmin- 
ster, — a meeting well suited, we trust, to forward and 
mature the scheme of general cooperation. Though the 
committee appointed in reference to the commemoration 
contemplated, he said, a meeting of churches holding the 



492 



UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 



Westminster standards, they by no means wished it to be 
• understood that they included in their design no other 
churches. "Were it of a character so restricted, some of 
their best friends would be excluded, — such a body, for 
instance, as the Wesleyan Methodists. Their scheme em- 
braced, he repeated, the whole Evangelistic Churches of 
Christendom. 

As forming the true pale of these churches, we recog- 
nize just two barriers. There are two walls, if we may so 
speak, which shut in the Evangelistic bodies on opposite 
sides from all those churches with which they must not and 
cannot associate. The one, where Christianity abuts on the 
antagonist superstition, is the wall of baptismal regenera- 
tion ; the other, where Christianity abuts on the antagonist 
infidelity, is the wall of Christ's mere humanity. These are 
impassable barriers. We cannot scale the rampart above ; 
we cannot ford the moat below ; we cannot join hands with 
the parties that lie entrenched behind. Does the Socinian 
and the Unitarian long for union on the one hand ? — then 
let them unite with their proper congener the Deist. Does 
the High Churchman and the Puseyite long for union on 
the other? — then let them unite with their proper con- 
gener the Roman Catholic. Between these and the Evan- 
gelistic Churches there can be no union. From the one 
wall there stretches away a dolorous region of ice and dark- 
ness, under the polar night and polar winter of Popery, in 
which no plant of grace can thrive, or where, if the true 
seed falls, carried as if by the winds, it produces, amid the 
chills and the gloom, merely a stinted and colorless verdure, 
that speaks of but the lack of the cheering light and the 
absence of the genial warmth. From the other wall there 
spreads an arid and burning waste of fluctuating sand, — 
the howling desert of infidelity, — watered by no refresh- 
ing rain or by no living spring, and where, if the seed falls, 
it lies inoperative and dead forever. Of the temperate 
and well-watered region between, it is one's proper part, at 
a time like the present, to look rather to the spiritual pro- 



UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 



493 



cluce than to the phenomena, if we may so speak, of its 
various climates. All the churches of this zone, in which 
conversion from sin to God takes place as the legitimate 
end and object of their ministrations, are to be regarded as 
sister churches. What, for instance, constitutes the chief 
bond of union between the Free Church and that body to 
which Dr. Candlish so directly alluded, — the Wesleyan 
Methodists? The fact mainly that, notwithstanding cer- 
tain doctrinal differences, our common Father recognizes 
both bodies, by sending down upon them his Spirit, and 
thus appropriating in both, through conversion, a seed to 
Himself. God owns Wesleyanism, and therefore we own 
it. He owns, after a similar manner, the Presbyterianism 
of Scotland, and therefore Wesleyanism owns it in turn. 
And this we hold to be a simple and perfectly intelligible 
bond of union. It is a bond which furnishes us with the 
principle on which Wesleyanism, and the other Evangelis- 
tic bodies similarly circumstanced, may well join with us 
in commemorating the bicentenary of our Westminster 
Assembly. Our standards are not theirs in every respect; 
but if they recognize them in the main as great boons to 
the world, — works through which, by the blessing of God, 
many conversions have been effected and the beliefs in 
great truths kept alive, — if they look upon them, in con- 
nection with the Presbyterianism of Christendom, in the 
same light in which we look upon the labors of the earlier 
Methodists in connection with its Methodism, — then most 
certainly may they join us with all cordiality in our bicen- 
tenary commemoration. 

The reader will perhaps forgive us should we illustrate 
our views on this subject by a simple story. We remem- 
ber telling it once before, in a rather widely-circulated 
periodical; but our object on that occasion was somewhat 
different from the present, and we addressed a very differ- 
ent circle of readers. We may perhaps be permitted to 
urge, by way of apology, that if we somewhat exceed the 
conventional limits of the article-writer of the present day, 

42 



494 



UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 



we keep far within those of the article-writer of the days 
of Queen Anne, when Whiggism was at once elaborate and 
happy in the Freeholder, and Toryism in the Examiner 
and the Craftsman. 

Need we point out the rationale of the story, or the 
moral which it carries? Willie had quitted the north 
country a respectable Presbyterian, but it was not until 
after meeting in the south with some pious Baptists that he 
had become vitally religious. The peculiarities of Baptist 
belief had no connection whatever with his conversion; 
higher and more generally entertained doctrines had been 
rendered efficient to that end ; but, as is exceedingly com- 
mon in such cases, he had closed with the entire theologi- 
cal code of the men who had been instrumental in the 
work ; and so, to the place which he had left an uncon- 
verted Presbyterian, he returned a converted Baptist. 
Certain it was, however, — though until after his death 
his townsmen failed to apprehend it, — that Willie was 
better fitted for Christian union with the truly religious 
portion of them in the later than in the earlier stages of his 
career. Willie the Presbyterian was beyond comparison 
less their Christian brother than Willie the Baptist, maugre 
their diversity of opinion on one important point. And in 
course of time they all lived to see it. We may add that, 
of all the many arguments promulgated in favor of tolera- 
tion and Christian union in this northern town, there were 
none that told with better effect than the arguments fur- 
nished by the life and death of Willie Watson, the "poor 
lost lad." 

It is now fifty years since Willie Watson returned, after 
an absence of nearly a quarter of a century, to his native 
place, a seaport town in the north of Scotland. He had 
been employed as a ladies' shoemaker in some of the dis- 
tricts of the south. No one at home had heard of Willie in 
the interval; and there was little known regarding him on 
his return, except that, when he had quitted town many 
years before, he had been a neat-handed, excellent work- 



D1O0N AND ITS PRINCIPLES 



495 



man, and what the elderly people called a quiet, decent lad. 
And he was now, though somewhat in the wane of life, a 
more thorough master of his trade than before. He was 
quiet and unobtrusive, too, as ever, and a great reader of 
serious books. And so the better sort of the people were 
beginning to draw to Willie by a kind of natural sympathy. 
Some of them had learned to saunter into his workshop in 
the long evenings, and some had grown bold enough to 
engage him in serious conversation when they met with him 
in his solitary walks; when out came the astounding fact, 
— and. important as it may seem, the simple-minded 
mechanic had taken no pains to conceal it, — that during 
his residence in tiie south country he had left the Kirk 
and gone over to the Baptists. There was a sudden revul- 
sion of feeling towards him. and all the people of the town 
began to speak of Willie Watson as " a poor lost lad." 

The "poor lost lad," however, was unquestionably a very 
excellent workman ; and as he made neater shoes than 
anybody else, the ladies of the place could see no great 
bai in in wearing them. He was singularly industrious, too, 
and indulged in no expense, except when he now and 
then bought a good book, or a few flower-seeds for his 
garden. He was, withal, a single man, with only an elderly 
sister, who lived with him, and himself, to provide for; 
and what between the regularity of his gains on the one 
hand, and the moderation of his desires on the other, 
Willie, for a person in his sphere of life, was in easy cir- 
cumstances. It was found that all the children in the 
neighborhood had taken a wonderful fancy to his shop. 
He was fond of telling them good little stories out of 
the Bible, and of explaining to them the prints which he 
had pasted on the walls. Above all, he was anxiously 
bent on teaching them to read. Some of their parents 
were poor, and some of them were careless ; and he saw 
that, unless they learned their letters from him, there was 
little chance of their ever learning them at all. Willie, in 
a small way, and to a very small congregation, was a kind 
of missionary ; and, what between his stories, and his pic- 



496 



UOTOX AXD ITS PRINCIPLES. 



tures, and his flowers, and his apples, his labors were won- 
derfully successful. Never yet was school or church half 
so delightful to the little men and women of the place as 
the shop of Willie "Watson, " the poor lost lad.'' 

Years of scarcity came on ; taxes were high, and .crops 
not abundant; and the soldiery abroad, whom the country 
had employed to fight in the great revolutionary war, had 
got an appetite at their work, and were consuming a great 
deal of meat and corn. The price of the boll rose tremen- 
dously ; and many of the townspeople, who were working 
for very little, were not in every case secure of their little 
when the work was done. Willie's small congregation 
began to find that the times were exceedingly bad. There 
were no more morning pieces among them, and the por- 
ridge was always less than enough. It was observed, 
however, that, in the midst of their distresses, Willie got 
in a large stock of meal, and that his sister had begun to 
bake as if she were making ready for' a wedding. The 
children were wonderfully interested in the work, and 
watched it to the end, — when lo ! to their great and 
joyous surprise, Willie began and divided the whole baking 
amongst them. Every member of his congregation got a 
cake. There were some who had little brothers and sisters 
at home who got two ; and from that day forward, till 
times got better, none of Willie's young people lacked 
their morning piece. The neighbors marvelled at Willie. 
To be sure, much of his goodness was a kind of natu- 
ral goodness ; but certain it was, that, independently of 
what it did, it took an inexplicable delight in the Bible 
and in religious meditation ; and all agreed that there was 
something strangely puzzling in the character of " the poor 
lost lad." 

We have alluded to Willie's garden. Never was there 
a little bit of ground better occupied. It looked like a 
piece of rich needlework. He had got wonderful flowers, 
too, — flesh -colored carnations streaked with red, and roses 
of a rich, golden yellow. Even the commoner varieties — 
auriculas and anemones, and the party-colored polyanthus 



UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 



497 



— grew better with Willie than with anybody else. A 
Dutchman might have envied him his tulips, as they stood, 
row above row, on their elevated beds, like so many soldiers 
on a redoubt ; and there was one mild, dropping season in 
which two of these beautiful flowers, each perfect in its 
kind, and of different colors, too, sprung apparently from 
the same stem. The neighbors talked of them as they 
would have talked of the Siamese twins ; but Willie, though 
it lessened the wonder, was at pains to show them that the 
flowers sprung from different roots, and that what seemed 
their common stem was in reality but a green, hollow 
sheath, formed by one of the leaves. Proud as Willie was 
of his flowers, — and, with all his humility, he could not 
help being somewhat proud of them, — he was yet consci- 
entiously determined to have no miracle among them, 
unless, indeed, the miracle should chance to be a true one. 
It was no fault of Willie's that all his neighbors had not 
as fine gardens as himself. He gave them slips of his best 
flowers — flesh-colored carnation, yellow rose, and all. He 
graffed their trees for them, too, and taught them the exact 
time for raising their tulip-roots, and the best mode of pre- 
serving them. Nay, more than all this, he devoted whole 
hours at times to give the finishing touches to their par- 
terres and borders, just in the way a drawing-master lays 
in the last shadings and imparts the finer touches to the 
landscapes of a favorite pupil. All seemed impressed with 
the unselfish kindliness of his disposition ; and all agreed 
that there could not be a warmer-hearted man or a more 
obliging neighbor than Willie Watson, "the poor lost lad." 

Everything earthly must have its last day. Willie was 
rather an elderly than an old man, and the childlike sim- 
plicity of his tastes and habits made people think of him 
as younger than he really was. But his constitution, never 
a strong one, was gradually failing ; he lost strength and 
appetite ; and at length there came a morning on which he 
could no longer open his shop. He continued to creep out 
at noon, however, for a few days after, to enjoy himself 

42* 



498 



UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 



among his flowers, with only the Bible for his companion ; 
but in a few days more he had declined so much lower, 
that the effort proved too much for him, and he took to 
his bed. The neighbors came flocking in. All had begun 
to take an interest in poor Willie ; and now they had 
learned that he was dying, and the feeling had deepened 
immensely with the intelligence. They found him lying 
in his neat little room, with a table, bearing the one beloved 
volume, drawn in beside his bed. He was the same quiet, 
placid creature he had ever been, — grateful for the slight- 
est kindness, and with a heart full of love for all, — full to 
overflowing. He said nothing of the Kirk, and nothing 
of the Baptists ; but earnestly did he urge on his visitors 
the one master truth of revelation. O, to be secure of 
an interest in Christ ! There was nothing else, he assured 
them, that would stand them in the least stead, when, like 
him, they came to die. As for himself, he had not a single 
anxiety. God, for Christ's sake, had been kind to him 
during all the long time he had been in the world ; and 
He was now kindly calling him out of it. Whatever He 
did to him was good, and for his good; and why, then, 
should he be anxious or afraid ? The hearts of Willie's 
visitors were touched, and they could no longer speak or 
think of him as " the poor lost lad." 

A few short weeks went by, and Willie had gone the 
way of all flesh. There was silence in his shop ; and his 
flowers opened their breasts to the sun, and bent their 
heads to the bee and the butterfly, with no one to take 
note of their beauty, or to sympathize in the delight of 
the little winged creatures that seemed so happy among 
them. There was many a wistful eye cast at the closed 
door and melancholy shutters, by the members of Willie's 
congregation ; and they could all point out his grave. 



APPENDIX. 



The Free Church of Scotland originated in a struggle for spiritual 
independence. Its constituent members refused to recognize the right of 
civil courts to supervise its spiritual sentences. The Court of Session in 
Scotland decided that, as the church was supported by the state, it was 
under the jurisdiction of the state, in spiritual as well as temporal con- 
cerns. The courts of appeal in England confirmed this decision, after 
long and patient deliberation. The advocates of spiritual independence 
found themselves, therefore, shut up to one of two alternatives : either to 
bow to the decision and yield to the authority of the state, or to sever 
themselves from the Established Church at the sacrifice of their stipends 
and parsonages and houses of worship. They did not hesitate ; and their 
exodus in a body from the General Assembly, and the organization of a 
new church, filled all Scotland with wonder or admiration. 

They exulted in having attained spiritual freedom, though at great cost, 
and supposed that, by the sacrifice of support from the state, they were 
released from its jurisdiction. But their freedom was subjected to new 
perils. The Court of Session again laid claim to the right of supervision 
over the spiritual discipline of the Eree Church. The following statement 
of the Cardross case, which has given rise to a new struggle between the 
Free Church and the civil courts, is taken from the Appendix to the Eng- 
lish edition of this volume : — 

" Mr. M'Millan, while Free Church minister of Cardross, was, under 



500 



APPENDIX. N 



two separate counts, charged by the Presbytery of Dumbarton, of which 
he was a member, with drunkenness, or with being ' the worse of drink ; ' 
and also, under a third count, of immodest conduct towards a married 
female, with certain aggravations. The Presbyteiy, after hearing evi- 
dence, found, by a majority, the first count in the libel not proven ; the 
second count, by a majority, proven, with the exception of indistinctness 
of articulation ; and with respect to the third count, they set aside the 
aggravating circumstances, and by a majority found a part of it proven. 

" Against this judgment Mr. M'Millan appealed to the Synod, the next 
highest court, who, after hearing parties, unanimously discharged the 
first count of the libel, and by a majority found the second and third 
counts not proven. 

" An appeal against this decision was taken by certain members of the 
Synod, and the matter accordingly came before the General Assembly, 
the supreme court of the church. After the case had been debated at 
great length on both sides, the General Assembly, on the motion of 
Dr. Candlish, seconded by George Dalziel, Esq., W. S., by a large major- 
ity delivered the following judgment ' That on the first count of the 
minor proposition of the libel, the Assembly allow the judgment of the 
Synod to stand ; on the second coun||pf the minor proposition of the libel, 
sustain the dissent and complaint and appeal, reverse the judgment of the 
Synod, and affirm the judgment of the Presbytery finding the charge in 
said count proven ; and on the third count of the minor proposition of 
libel, sustain the dissent and complaint, reverse the judgment of the Synod, 
and find the whole of the charge in said count, as framed originally in the 
libel, proven.' 

" In consequence of this decision, Mr. M'Millan was suspended sine die 
from the office of the holy ministry, and the pastoral tie between him and 
the congregation of Cardross was dissolved. 

" Mr. M'Millan hereupon raised an action in the civil court to prohibit 



APPENDIX. 



501 



the General Assembly from carrying out their sentence ; and on an inter- 
dict being served upon that body, he was cited to appear at their bar to 
answer for his conduct. Having appeared at the time appointed, and ad- 
mitted that he had raised the action in question, the Assembly at once 
unanimously passed sentence of deposition upon him. Mr. M'Millan now 
raised other two actions in the civil court against the General Assembly, 
and individual members of it, for a reduction of their sentences, and claim- 
ing damages." 

In these suits the Free Church at first refused to appear as a party, put- 
ting in the pleas that in spiritual matters it is independent of civil jurisdic- 
tion ; and that by the Constitution of the Church it is made a duty to 
depose from the ministry, by a summary process, any clergyman who 
applies to the civil court for redress against its discipline. 

These pleas were overruled by Lord Jerviswoode, of the Court of Ses- 
sion, and the Free Church was enjoined to produce its Constitution in 
court, that the court might decide whether in this act of discipline it had 
conformed to the Constitution. In announcing this decision, the learned 
judge virtually denied the distinctions between things spiritual and things 
civil, and between the church as under the authority of Christ and an 
association of individuals formed by mutual consent. He distinctly 
claimed that the Free Church in its dealings with its members is amena- 
ble to the civil courts, like any voluntary association ; and that even in 
cases of suspension or deposition for spiritual offences. The committee 
of the Free Church, though denying utterly the authority of the court, 
thought it expedient to yield to the decision, so far at least as to submit 
the Constitution of the Church to its inspection. 

Here the matter rests for the present ; but, as may readily be seen, the 
gravest issues are involved. If the court overrules the sentences of the 
church, it will virtually restore Mr. M'Millan to the ministry from which 
he has been deposed, and reinstate him in the pastoral connection which 



502 



APPENDIX. 



has been dissolved. In short, it will nullify the spiritual power of the 
church, and make it completely subordinate to the state. All other 
churches will be shorn of independence by the same decision, and the 
most odious form of state absolutism will be asserted. A struggle must en- 
sue in Scotland which will convulse its social order, and array the spirit- 
ual forces in solid phalanx against the civil power ; for the spiritual freedom 
won by the Reformation will not be surrendered by those who have been 
taught by then own history, no less than by the Bible, to give unto Cae- 
sar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. 

The previous paragraphs were written more than two years ago. Since 
that time the Court of Session, with a full bench, has dismissed the 
appeal of Mr. M'Millan, on certain technical grounds, but without renounc- 
ing the jurisdiction claimed by Judge Jerviswoode. Mr. M'Millan, with 
a pertinacity worthy of a better cause, has commenced suits against the 
Moderator of the Assembly which deposed him, and many of its prominent 
members ; but none of them have come to trial, and the spiritual authority 
of the Free Church is, therefore, still held in suspense. 



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